The allegedly scientific research organisation, the “Family Research Institute” has reacted quickly to news that Mary Cheney is having a baby with her partner Heather Poe:
Mary Cheney, the Vice President’s unmarried daughter, is expecting. Dr. Paul Cameron, Chairman of the Family Research Institute, a Colorado Springs think-tank, condemned her decision:
“Unmarried women should not deliberately have children. Their children are more apt to experience privation and disruption. Consequently, such children are more apt to do poorly in school, disrupt society (e.g., engage in criminality), and be personally troubled. These wrongs are compounded when the child is brought into a homosexual setting.”
The head of this “research institute”, Dr Paul Cameron concludes:
Her pregnancy is further evidence that participation in homosexual activity distorts value systems, inducing practitioners to harm the commonweal. Our society already has too many children born without the benefits of marriage; Cheney’s action is not only a bad example, but poor treatment of an innocent child.
More wingnut reaction reported here, along with evidence of the positive psychosocial development of children raised by same sex parents.
San Francisco blogger Mark Morford asks:
The big question: Will Mary Cheney’s baby be evil incarnate? Will it come out battered and pre-scarred and pre-traumatized and preternaturally resentful, with a fistful of Zoloft in one tiny hand and a copy of her grandmother’s lesbian-ariffic book “Sisters” in the other, given all the weird vibes and seething homophobic energy surrounding its very gestation?
At Salon, a guide to what Cheney can expect during her pregnancy:
Congratulations — and welcome to your politically inconvenient pregnancy!
More evidence for the fact that the anti-communist marriage of libertarians and conservatives is a marriage made in Hell.
Go fly a kite, Paul Cameron. You don’t represent this righty.
I’m sure they can spin this one into some kind of virgin birth scenario. It’s Christmas isn’t it?
The General shares his views here.
from their website
What the heck is sexual social policy??
Unmarried women should not deliberately have children. Their children are more apt to experience privation and disruption. Consequently, such children are more apt to do poorly in school, disrupt society (e.g., engage in criminality), and be personally troubled. These wrongs are compounded when the child is brought into a homosexual setting.�
This is laughable. Cheney’s baby is only coming into an ‘unmarried’ family because the rightwingers have banned its parents from getting married. Otherwise I’m sure they are similar to any married straight couple. This baby will be born into a rich family. It will not be suffering privation and is unlikely to do poorly in school. It may, however, turn out to be personally troubled, as would be anyone with Dick Cheney as a grandfather.
Tell me suz, what’s the point of your personal attack on Cheney when he and his wife have been completely supportive of this pregnancy as has indeed been Bush himself?
What Jason said.
I loathe righties who presume to speak for me, but I’m not too fond of lefties who see evil where it isn’t. Paul Cameron can go fly a kite. Dick Cheney and GWB have behaved entirely appropriately on this score. There is a difference.
Oh really, Jason?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/07/20020726-12.html
We all know what his attitude towards same sex marriage is.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2459758
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/02/25/MNGNG57QKI1.DTL
I’ll give Dick Cheney credit where it’s due – he opposed the administration’s moves to run “defence of marriage” campaigns and push for a constitutional amendment.
Bush eagerly signed on to a Roveian wedge strategy.
I don’t know what exactly you mean, Jason, and SL, but if Bush has expressed his personal support for Mary Cheney, it’s a free pass for a family friend. The whole point of all this is the double standard involved where Bush supports the “base” by damning same sex marriage and parenthood – except where it’s one of his own.
At least SL seems reasonably consistent in her libertarianism. Jason, it seems to me, has been aligning himself increasingly with right wing partisans like Bird and C.L. and defending Bush against the slings and arrows of TEH LEFT.
Any one who’s a libertarian should find very little indeed to praise in George W. Bush’s interventionist big-spending morally judgemental approach to everything.
So you agree with me, Kim? Yes I remember reading somewhere that Bush did basically issue a statement saying ‘congratulations for the pregnancy’. So lying about something like that is now being ‘inconsistent’ with my libertarianism? Give me one instance where I’ve defended Bush on his gay marriage policy, Kim, otherwise retract that accusation. I find it very offensive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/us/07cheney.html?em&ex=1165726800&en=5683ab89f4d5f858&ei=5087
But according to Kim, I am inconsistent in my libertarianism because I didn’t paint Bush to be an evil monster who personally hates gays.
Ridiculous.
Jason asked: Tell me suz, what’s the point of your personal attack on Cheney when he and his wife have been completely supportive of this pregnancy as has indeed been Bush himself?
It’s sarcasm Jason.
And I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that Bush has been “completely supportive” of this pregnancy when all we have is a one-sentence press statement to go on.
You couldn’t expect post modernist twits who believe in anything goes to see the wood from the trees http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,20886832-401,00.html
How does it go again?
“To stay out of poverty in America, it’s necessary to do three simple things, social scientists have found: finish high school, don’t have kids until you marry, and wait until you are at least 20 to marry. Do those three things, and the odds against your becoming impoverished are less than one in ten. Nearly 80 percent of everyone who fails to do those three things winds up poor.”
But of course if you grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth, then marrying tiddles the cat or some such can avoid all this unpleasantness. That’s a university education for you these days I guess.
Mark on 9 December 2006 at 5:36 pm
It would take a left wing sociologist to cock an skeptical eye at a public figure who lets slip the proposition that water tends to run down hill. The not very well kept secret of the Occident is the sanctification of the Holy Family. But I guess two millennia of not so subtle hints on the matter are not enough clues for the penny to drop in ivory towers, at least since the Great Unlearning of the past generation.
The discussion of the merits of one and two parent families in the context of gays is surreal. Gays are a tiny fraction of the community. And the fraction of gays who want to get married and raise kids is a fairly small fraction of that fraction.
Some lefties would still like to frame single person marriage in gender terms. Once upon a time one could run a pretty effective social outrage line under this head. But I dont think anyone would quibble with the fact that the native single parent mom in Australia is nowadays not necessarily doomed or a social outcast.
The real problem with single parenthood lies in its connection with the explosive issue of race. When ethnic minority groups start to show, for what ever reason, very poor household formation rates then you know social disaster is on your doorstep.
But clear-eyed or honest discussions of race by standard social scientific modellers or common-or-garden variety liberal moralists found at Fairfax is difficult, if not outright impossible. It is more important that conservatives who state, or even hint, at the bleeding obvious on “family values” are properly chastised.
So I guess we will just have to change the subject when we want to talk about how best to keep families integrated where society is in the throes of post-modern globalisation. And hunker down for the day when civil unrest start.
One of the reasons gays don’t have the same legal benefits as married couples is because the state of Virginia actively discriminates against them. The recent November elections passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage similar to Ohio’s from a couple of years ago. This was in today’s WaPo:
So Paul Cameron’s statement that “our society already has too many children born without the benefits of marriage” is only true because of legislative (and now constitutional) discrimination.
Yes, Cam, as several of the links I’ve posted say.
Jason, if you’re comfortable with thinking Bush is a really accepting kinda dude who doesn’t at all want to impose his beliefs on others, that’s your disconnection with reality, not mine. So I’m unclear how it is that I’ve offended you.
Jack, read the post. I link to a page which links to peer-reviewed studies that show conclusively that children brought up in same sex families are just as well off as those brought up in stable het relationships.
If you and G. W. Bush want to deny reality, that’s your lookout.
It’s not my problem, and you should take your bigotry and…
How the hell you got to your “OMG! Non-whites are having kids!” schtick is just a logical leap too far for me.
Conservatives can see the great social benefits in monogamous heterosexual marriage and concomitant child rearing benefits, with its iconic social imprimatur and at the same time tolerate the eclectic and the bizarre. This is largely Bush’s stance and mine. Positive discrimination in favour of traditional marriage and the rest(Mary Cheneys) can please themselves. Just don’t ask us to subsidise that choice. As far as I’m concerned, you want to have a baby as a solo mum and bring it up at your expense that’s fine with me. Personally I go along with making the natural father and mother jointly and severally responsible for the task. If you don’t like that idea, try abortion or adoption my dears. Personally the latter is my preference given the great trauma and guilt the former often causes women.(here it is usually the symptom of a failed relationship)Of course in my preferred world of natural conception (no IVF, etc)it is easy to identify mum and dad, rather than shaking up test tubes full of random eggs and sperm and doling them out to all and sundry at taxpayer expense.
So, I’ll happily look down my nose at the Mary Cheneys and wish them well bringing up their sprogs at their or their families’/friends’ expense. That’s the broad-minded kind of libertarian guy I am. In the meantime I’ll advise my daughter like George Bush would his, about courtship and marriage and advise you to do likewise, in case your daughters bump into my son.
Steady on Obby, for your own protection I’d advise against that sort of talk.
You’ll have every shelf-bound, clucky spinster stalking you, you smoothe-talker you.
Don’t you know how rare DTE GSOH blokes are these days?
My warning may even be too late!
Can’t you hear the loud ticking of advancing biological clocks? Peek out through your venetians. I’ll bet even now there are legions of bunny boilers milling at your white picket fence.
Ladies! Curb your nesting instincts. Obby’s already spoken for!
There is no doubt that children benefit from parental stability. Why such parental stability is presumed to be the peculiar province of only heterosexual couples who are legally married is the matter under debate.
Why conservatives place such emphasis on the individualist postconsumerism nuclear family model for childrearing when the truly traditional extended family model (consciously adopted and adapted by many if not most same-sex coparents) is obviously superior in providing consistent, reliable adult interaction and affection is another question.
Actually the post modernists have largely had their day. Their brief dazzling flash through the sky of history was of course coincidentally aligned with a brief period of ‘abundance’, which is about to pass rather quickly. See here http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HL07Dj03.html
Watch for sudden change of morals as we now enter the ‘post abundance’ era. The sorts of generous and lax social/sexual security policies, we as a society, have been able to indulge ourselves in are about to evaporate politically. Watch for this quickening trend in future, particularly with the catalyst of an aging population.
I ask you seriously? How much do you think South Aussie marrieds with kids in the burbs are going to be able to subsidise the feral solo mums with 3 or 4 kids to different dads across town, as they cope with Media Mike’s grand plan to reduce GG emissions to 60% of 1990 levels, over the next few decades?
http://origin.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20880925-5006787,00.html
Get the picture green, liberal progressive tosspots?
I’ve had it with you lot. You’re always using me to score pathetic political points when in fact you have absolutely no idea what you’re yapping about.
You know whi I’m talking about, observa.
Could it be that [2], [3], [4] are made up mostly of [1]?
Or are we to assume that the trailer trash portion of the population of South Australia has been shipped in from (let us say) Tasmania? And if that’s the case, where will Tasmania’s trailer trash be imported from?
You see, there are all sorts of reasons why married mums and dads are happy enough to allow the State to subsidise their illegitimate grandchildren.
Tiddles the Cat: “I’ve had it with you lot. You’re always using me to score pathetic political points when in fact you have absolutely no idea what you’re yapping about.”
Tiddles, hop in, babe. We’ll drive all night in my bitchin’ Audi 6, and then grab us some lobster at dawn, out at Neptune’s Net on PCH, up by the Ventura County Line.
Together, Tiddles, we can break this trap,
We’ll run til we drop,
Tiddles we’ll never go back.
Oh — will you walk with me out on the wire?
Cos Tiddles I’m just a scaredy-cat lonely cat driver
But I gotta know how it feels…
Sure babe. Have you been done?
Unfortunately Tiddles dahling you’re so aux fait this season. Same with the pillow biters. We’re right into understanding marrying cobras and trees these days.
Unfortunately aux[sic] fait?
That word… I do not think it means what you think it means. [/Inigo]
Obs, you’re weird dude.
Ok, I was in a bad mood last night so belatedly, Jason, apologies if I caused any offence.
Take Jason’s feelings out of it: imagine if Chelsea Clinton, or a daughter of Gore, Kerry or Pelosi, was a pregnant lesbian.
If Dick Nixon was the only prominent American politician of the 1970s who could go to Communist China without being smeared by the Republicans, so Dick Cheney is the only prominent American politician today who can have a pregnant lesbian daughter without being smeared by the Republicans.
And people claim Republicans aren’t progressive.
More weird dudes for Kim here http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2496320,00.html
Try au fait tigtog or just passe.
Kim on 10 December 2006 at 3:04 am
Can you point to any thing I have written that denies the conclusions of these studies, namely that some gay households can be just as effective parenting teams as most straight households? If not then you should retract or just stick to fabricating reality, if thats what turns you on.
FTR I am fine with gays or lesbians raising children. I dont have a problem with full legal rights for such unions. I wonder why they must have a marriage ceremony to go with it. But if annoying social conservatives is what really makes gay activists happy then I dont see any reason to spoil their fun.
On a more reality-based note, do you think that the typical gay parenting team is likely to be a representative sample of the population of typical gay confirmed bachelors? Given the anecdotal evidence that many gays are averse to “breeders”. Perhaps the fact that lesbians are not “gay” will save gay parenting.
Kim says:
How the hell do you manage to get an liberal Arts degree with such a poor grasp of logic. Ohh that figures…
I dont have a problem with ethnic groups having as many kids as they like. So long as they are educated and socialised properly up to high IQ and high EQ levels. Not likely if we follow the multicultural prescription of hanging onto tribal ethnic traditions.
I was pointing to the fact that some societies (not Australia, with the exception of Aborigines) have a real problem when some ethnic groups show a strong propensity to form households that are not married with kids. Getting the menfolk in these groups to get married and hang around to raise the kids is a problem of the first importance.
This is a logical move that may have been at once too subtle and too obvious for you to grasp.
Never mind, you can always return to the pseudo-problem of marriage licence-less gay parents whilst other areas of society go to hell and a hand-basket.
That would be my point, obs: au fait and passe are antonyms, not synonyms.
“So long as they are educated and socialised properly up to high IQ and high EQ levels.”
For most people “Brave New World” is a charming piece of fustian utopia. But not for the Strocchimeister. So when are you planning to decant your spawn Jack?
Y’know, aside from “tax audit”, can anyone think of a more low key yet chilling phrase than
“educated and socialised properly up”.
And what happens to the ones that aren’t?
And if by EQ you mean “emotional quotient” Jack, I suggest you start running now before the EQ Quops start after you, as they will under the regime you seem to desire. There’s gonna be precious little room in the Brave New World you’re ogling up for whackos like you or me.
Are you sure it’s the ceremony that’s important, or the fact that one document, a marriage certificate, automatically recognises that one’s partner is eligible for the full array of spousal rights?
For example, Mary Cheney has been interviewed about the spousal rights situation for herself and her partner Heather. She sidestepped about having made living wills, medical powers of attorney etc etc etc and was sure that this meant that they would be fine.
However, if Mary is lying comatose in hospital and Dick and Lynne decide to deny Heather visiting rights and contest her right to make medical decisions, then without a marriage certificate Heather is almost certainly likely to be kept away from her spouse (especially in Virginia – civil unions are entirely unrecognised, gay or straight).. With a marriage certificate a spouse can call the police and medical staff and obstructive family can be charged with impeding access, without one? SOL.
andrew sullivan – superfamous gay american ‘conservative’ blogger – claims gay marriage is a conservative ploy that will pull gays into the mainstream and probably, lead us to the end of history (again)
hippy/old school 70s gays couldn’t give fig for marriage or religion (metaphysical tinsel for dinosaurs?) but want the de facto benefits preserve the anything-goes gay sexual culture (which is the source of just about every social trend the desiccated right detests – shaved privates, anyone?). which is pretty much what we have now.
as for observa, to paraphrase andrew downer, who cares what some bunch of rightwingers thinks. if the crusty old ALP rightwingers of the hawke-keating era could foist gays on the military just imagine what the 21st century effort will bring.
the religious-right thing has peaked, disgraced as it has been by the incontinence, incompetence and gross hypocrisy of religious-right ascendancy in america. will it be obama who drives the stake through its heart?
Hey, Toonces. Where’s my lift?
Plus you haven’t answered my question. Are you actually a dog?
Nabakov on 12 December 2006 at 3:12 am
How about “illeducated and unsocialised” for a spine-chilling phrase? This leads to caste society and civil strife. We dont need to invent a “fustian utopia” [sic] to get a shudder of horror. Merely read some of Theodore Dalrymples cautionary tales.
One visit to Northern Mexico gave me enough spine-chilling thrills on this score. Or see the recent history of multiculturalised ethnic immigration in Australia for a decaff version.
I am really trying to isolate what makes a person fit for citizenship. IQ measures smartness, EQ is a rough index of niceness. And an ME measures fitness. Put them together and you have a good immigrant selection criteria.
I humbly submit that these should be the critieria for citizenship in both immigrant selection and subsequent settlement. It is tedious to continually re-invent the wheel on these basic issues. But our cultural professionals and politicals have completely lost the plot since the Great Unlearning of the seventies and eighties.
Australia will have to take a higher ratio of ethnic immigrants in the future to make up for the dearth in the reproduction rate following half a generation of childless women. (Howard is already beating Keating on the NESB score.)
It is imperative that ethnics are aggressively integrated into the community by various civic strategies. Again, Howard is taking the lead in this with his Enlish language, civics and mateship policies. (Remember “fraternity” was one third of the Enlightenment triad of values.)
If Nabakov objects to the notion of recruiting fit, smart, nice people as citizens then he should say so. It might shed light on some of his grotesque ideological contortions.
[irony alert enabled] I will have them killed. [Irony alert disabled]
Prospective immigrants – whether black, white or brindle – who do not have the right combination of fit bodies, smart minds and nice souls will fail to make the cut. This more or less happened for most of post-war Austrlalian history, though selection methods were cruder.
Later generations who slip into a ghetto like existence courtesy of the Wets rackets and rorts will have to be dealt with by some expensive combination of the welfare and lawfare state, as they are now. The term for this is “custodial state”. Wouldnt it be better just to get ethnic immigration right from the get-go?
Cant you string more than two sentences together without making some vulgar reference to my personal affairs? It is really creepy having this heckler-cum-stalker following me around the web trading on a largely mendacious version of my private life. Get a life.
“The discussion of the merits of one and two parent families in the context of gays is surreal. Gays are a tiny fraction of the community. And the fraction of gays who want to get married and raise kids is a fairly small fraction of that fraction.”
Umm so discussing how active discrimination affects a minority in society is now – surreal? Howdy doodey – as long as we’re clear on that one. Oddly enough, i have yet to find active discrimination against the majority in society but perhaps I don’t get out enough…..
“But the fraction of gays who want to get married” blah blah blah – well excuse me honey, from wherever you may be lookin’ from ol’hetero-land, it may appear that way to you, but over here in homo-reality land, its all when can i print those rather charming gilt invites? Gay people want recognition for their relationships for the same reason you do – because it brings legal and financial equality with our dear dear straight brothers & sisters, gives our children legal certainities in a world fraught with little difficulties in that area, and we too, would like OUR society to acknowledge our relationships with as much love, care and importance as enjoyed by our dear dear straight brothers & sisters. Personally i don’t give a damn as to whether it’s church sanctified marriage, but civil union? Damn it, I’d even wear a dress.
“Prospective immigrants – whether black, white or brindle – who do not have the right combination of fit bodies, smart minds and nice souls will fail to make the cut. This more or less happened for most of post-war Austrlalian history, though selection methods were cruder.”
This is nonsense. Most of the postwar Mediterranean migrants, especially the women, were factory fodder – IQ had nothing to do with it. (Not that those people weren’t smart, but they weren’t wanted or selected for their IQs.)
“(Remember “fraternityâ€? was one third of the Enlightenment triad of values.)”
It was one third of the ‘values’ of the French revolution, which is not synonymous with the Enlightenment – and neither the French revolution nor the Enlightenment nor Australian mateship have been immediately wonderful to women.
Bush should have dumped Cheney last election. the whole Cheney clan are a disgrace. Now another poor child being subjected to 2 lesbos. Really sad.
“I’m sure they can spin this one into some kind of virgin birth scenario.”
Right, Phil. Parthenogenesis. It’s a MURKEL !!! Don’t have to be a rattle-snake handler to buy that one.
It’s still quite a ways though, from Brokeback Mountain, Wyoming, to the banks of the Potomac, Washinton D.C.