(If nothing else a title like this should get the google hits going - perhaps I'd better add "Britney Spears" in there to make sure).
It seems that a variety of prurient lefties and busy body righties (feel free to swap descriptive adjectives as you wish) are working themselves into a lather over the fact that Mary Cheney (daughter of VP Cheney) is pregnant while unmarried and, possibly worse, living in a long term lesbian relationship. As with Tim Worstall, this is the sort of area where my general sympathy with the christian conservative part of the US political spectrm goes out of the window, so since these "holier than thou" moralizers are spouting off about the sactity of the traditional famialy yadda yadda yadda I'm going to attack them first. Fortunately though I have plently of anger left over for the scummy NY Slimes and the gay-righty lobby who seems to think that this is a great opportunity to open their mouths and illustrate that they too can be hate-filled bigots.
The NYT and Wapo both have quotes from so-called christians displaying a distinct lack of christian virtues but I think the prize goes to this townhall column by Janice Crouse found (and fisked) by feministe. I'd suggest reading that fisking in its entirety because it makes many excellent points so I'm just going to comment on the most fatuous bit, the conclusion:
All those people who talk about doing what is best “for our children” need to get back to the basics: children need a married mom and dad. Children can do without a lot of the trimmings of childhood, but nothing can replace a home where the mother and dad love each other enough to commit for a lifetime and are absolutely crazy about their kids –– enough to be willing to sacrifice their own needs to see that their children get the very best.
This is sheer blithering idiocy and wilfull mistatement of the facts. Children do not need a married mom and dad. If they did then every single child growing up in history where the mother was (grass) widowed and failed to (re)marry would have been some kind of psychological disaster as would every single child growing up to divorced parents around the world today, not to mention all those families where dad spends all his time working and never sees the kids.
I will agree that the ideal rearing arrangement is probably "a home where the mother and dad love each other enough to commit for a lifetime and are absolutely crazy about their kids", I accept that on the whole a family with both sexes present is better than one with only one sex but that is it. A traditional marriage only works when the parents do in fact love each other. It is clearly documented that having marital fights hurts even when there is no divorce and it is also clear that step-parents often abuse (sexually or otherwise) step-children even if they apparently love their new spouse. So far as I can tell Mary Chaney and her partner love each other deeply and clearly care abou the idea of having children enough that they are willing to figure out how to find a surrogate father and to be able to withstand the scrutiny of the media and the complaints of the hate-filled. Assuming that this relationship, which has lasted a 15 years so far (longer than a great many "traditional" marriages), continues the child, and any others the couple have, will be brought up in a loving two parent family with both parents likely to "sacrifice their own needs to see that their children get the very best".
Janice also claims that the child will not know who its father is. This could be the case but I don't actually see any sign that this will in fact be true. I could imagine all sorts of relationships where the father is both known to the child and takes some part in its upbringing. Furthermore the single parent mothers that she seems to be comparing Ms Cheney to are rather different in that far from living in a long term stable relationship with one person they tend to have multiple children by multiple fathers, and the fathers equally have multiple children by different mothers. They are also frequently pregnant for the first time when they are rougly half Ms Cheney's age and a large reason for their failings as a parent is that they have also failed to complete education (teenage pregnancy at will do that) and hence failed to get a job with a good steady income. As far as money goes, whether or not Ms Cheney holds a job is irrelevant, I sincerely doubt that her parents would let her or their new grandshild starve or live in poverty and since she is aged 37 there is no need to worry that having a child will interrupt her education.
The only thing I will say is that I think that the average member of the "christian right" is going to feel more like Katherine Jean Lopez and prefer leave her alone with nothing more than perhaps a few prayers for her health and wellbeing.
This the leaves us with the scum on the left who seem to think that Mary Cheney and her baby should be used as an issue to attack the republicans and especially Bush and Cheney. Somehow it seems that Mary Cheney is required to either be in political lockstep with her father or to be utterly disowned by him. Apparently on the left the idea that families can have political disagreements and still love one another is not known. And then as Tigerhawk points out, they use her pregnancy to peddle myths about the 2004 election which seem to be solidly contradicted by the facts.
Personally I think the people on the right should show a bit of christian charity and forgiveness and the people on the left should show a bit of sensitivity for privacy and the human rights of Ms Cheney and the whole lot of them should shut the fuck up and let the lady have her baby in peace.
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