Soft Bigotry, Meet Low Expectations

Wow, it must be awesome to get credit for only being an asshole and not a total asshole. An article in the LA Times on Mary Cheney’s Big Fat Lesbian Pregnancy is titled "A pregnant pause in right wing" (ho ho) and subtitled (emphasis mine) "Social conservatives remain silent or temper their criticism about news that Cheney's gay daughter is expecting." Later in the article, "groups that oppose same-sex marriage and gay adoptions" are credited with using "a delicate touch not always seen in the political wars over gay issues" in their criticism.

How nice. It’s always so generous to use a delicate touch when criticizing someone else’s personal decisions that have nothing to fucking do with you.

Anyhow, check out this magnanimously tempered criticism and thoughtful employment of a delicate touch:

"Not only is she doing a disservice to her child, she's voiding all the effort her father put into the Bush administration," said Janice Shaw Crouse, senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the think tank of Concerned Women for America.

Mary Cheney is a terrible daughter and will be a terrible mother. Delicate. Temperate.

Crouse also described Cheney’s pregnancy as "unconscionable," but I guess that didn’t fit into a story about how delicate and temperate the rightwing is being.

"Children deserve the very best we can offer, and gay adoption — by definition — intentionally denies children either a mother or a father," said Carrie Gordon Earll, an analyst for Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based family advocacy ministry. "Adoption laws should put the needs of children first, above the desires of adults."

Mary Cheney is a selfish dyke who will be a terrible mother to a pitiable child. Delicate. Temperate.

Earll also said, "Just because you can conceive a child outside a one-woman, one-man marriage doesn't mean it's a good idea. Love can't replace a mother and a father."

Of course, even a mother and a father can’t replace love, so I’d say any child is better off with two loving parents of the same sex or one loving parent of either sex than two parents of opposite sexes who treat their kids like shit. Although I wouldn’t expect anyone working for Dr. James Dobson to recognize anything short of Being Gay While Parenting to be abuse, considering he not only believes that misbehaving children should be spanked, but also that a child’s time crying after being punished should be limited "by offering him a little more of whatever caused the original tears" because extended crying by beaten children is a "protest aimed at punishing the enemy." When abuse is your foremost parenting strategy, it’s no wonder you argue that "love can’t replace a mother and a father," rather than the other way around. Fucking assholes.

Oh my. Was that indelicate and intemperate of me?