Dick Cheney has now come out in favor of marriage equality, even helping the effort to legalize same-sex marriage in the state of Maryland a few months ago. So why did he wait until he was out of office to do so, silently sitting by while the administration he helped lead fought tooth and nail against equality for his own daughter and millions like her? Political convenience, of course.
Dick Cheney says he didn’t see the point of raising the issue of gay marriage in the 2000 presidential campaign, even though he supported it.
The former vice president suggested it wouldn’t have done much good and probably would have sunk President George W. Bush’s prospects for office. “Why?” he responded to ABC News when asked in a televised interview whether he should have pushed harder for gay couples to marry.
How about for the same reasons you’re now publicly advocating for it? Because it’s the right thing to do. Because the inability to marry causes real harm to real people, including the daughter that you love. Because sometimes principle, especially justice and equality, is more important than politics. Marriage equality wasn’t really an issue in 2000, but it was in 2004, after the Goodridge decision in Massachusetts. That was your opportunity to stand up for your daughter and for equality and justice and you put thought your career was more important — despite the fact that you had already gone as far as you were going to go in politics and had more money than you could possibly spend, which means you had almost nothing to risk.
And yet you spent the next four years being quiet while your administration did everything it could to destroy any hope of justice and helped get legislators elected to office and judges named to the bench who would make it far more difficult to get legal equality. Worse yet, you sat silently while that administration and its political allies used gay people as convenient scapegoats, demonizing them as cultural aliens bent on destroying America. You played political games with the lives of gay people. I can’t imagine why or how your daughter could forgive you for this; I certainly won’t.
15 comments
Skip to comment form ↓
Michael Heath
August 5, 2012 at 9:40 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It would take an enormous turn-around in the Republican party on gay rights, led by Dick Cheney, to move him from the minus side of the equation to the plus side when it comes to the direct harm he caused to GBLTs and their families.
Dick Cheney’s biggest impact on gay marriage was his running on the top Republican ticket in 2004 where they prioritized conservative Christian hatred of gays to turn out the vote. They needed to leverage this bigotry given their horrendous performance in office from 2001 thru 2004. The only way Bush-Cheney could have won in 2004 was to rile up conservative Christians motivated by their hatred of gay people to vote while ignoring, denying, or holding their noses when it came to voting for Bush-Cheney and the Republican down-ticket.
In addition Mr. Cheney helped lead an effort that manufactured increased hatred by conservative Christians towards gays. They didn’t merely exploit fear and hatred which existed prior to 2001-2004 and emanated out of conservative Christian churches, VP Cheney’s Republican party developed and drove narratives which increased the fear and hatred conservative Christians have towards gays.
coragyps
August 5, 2012 at 9:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Because sometimes principle, especially justice and equality, is more important than politics.”
Ed, you seem to be forgetting of whom you speak…..
Principle? You might as well apply that word to Carl Rove.
John Pieret
August 5, 2012 at 9:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Why?” he responded to ABC News when asked in a televised interview whether he should have pushed harder for gay couples to marry.
Because you personally knew the toll homophobia took on good people like your own daughter?
slc1
August 5, 2012 at 10:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Considering that Cheney’s daughter Mary also supported the Rethuglican ticket in 2004 and said nary a word about the anti-gay hysteria ginned up by Karl Rove, she was no better then her father. He sold her out with her approval.
JasonTD
August 5, 2012 at 10:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed wrote, a few posts down,
Interesting how motives don’t matter much one day, but a post is made about how Cheney “sold out his daughter” for politics on the same issue the next. Besides, another explanation is that Cheney didn’t then believe in marriage equality that strongly. At least, not strongly enough to take a political risk. (For his party, even if not for himself personally)
The political calculations favor balancing pleasing the base while remaining palatable to swing voters. As long as the Republican base is against marriage equality, don’t expect any Republicans facing elections to be for it. The risk for Obama was minimal now that he’s in office. The few social conservatives in the Democratic party won’t stay home just because his position has ‘evolved’ fully.
The cynic in me doesn’t expect any politician to take a politically risky stand for something because its “the right thing to do.” It is the voting public that pushes politicians in new directions. We live in an age where politicians are not rewarded for being true leaders. They are trained not to take these kinds of risks. If the Democrats are taking the right position now, it is only because enough people that would vote for Democrats support marriage equality. Ed was right the first time. Motivations don’t really matter.
slc1
August 5, 2012 at 10:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re JasonTD @ #5
Obama has done a double flip flop on same sex marriage. It is my understanding that, in the early 1990s, he was in favor of it; in the 2008 primaries, he was against it; now he is in favor of it again.
Ed Brayton
August 5, 2012 at 11:04 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
JasonTD wrote:
Both put political convenience ahead of principle and I’ve slammed both of them for doing so. But when I said that Obama’s motivations “didn’t matter,” the full statement makes clear that I did not mean that it didn’t matter morally — how could it mean that since I’ve strongly criticized him for it many times? — but that it didn’t matter in terms of the effect his belated endorsement of marriage equality is going to have, indeed is already having, on public opinion.
Except I didn’t say that. Motivations matter a great deal. What I said was that good things can result even if someone’s motivations are bad (as is the case with Obama’s highly contrived endorsement of marriage equality, driven solely by political calculation). But the same thing is true the other way, of course; Cheney’s bad motivations also led to very bad outcomes, also driven solely by political calculation. You’re conflating the moral question of bad motivations with the ultimate result of one’s actions, regardless of intent. Two different issues.
StevoR
August 5, 2012 at 11:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Could be mistaken but I think I very vaguely recall reading somewhere that Dick Cheney worked quietly behind the scenes to stop some of the (relatively) worse homophobic policies for coming into effect or becoming official.
Okay, its not much and Cheney is still a pretty horrible person but still, for whatever little its worth.
StevoR
August 5, 2012 at 11:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Think ’twas even in one of Mike Moore’s books, maybe?
slc1
August 5, 2012 at 11:50 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think we have to give both Obama and Cheney their due here. Without Cheney’s phone calls to Rethuglican legislators in the Maryland lower house, and the two who he convinced to vote aye, the measure would have failed. Obama’s endorsement, at least according to the polls, had a positive effect in Prince Georges Co., Md. which is more then 50% Afro-American and where the black clergy is heavily against same sex marriage, by convincing some of the Afro-American community to reject their pastor’s position and vote nay on the referendum.
Trickster Goddess
August 5, 2012 at 6:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I recall during the 2004 election Cheney saying that he personally was against a federal anti-marriage amendment, but that Bush set policy and it was his duty to defer to his “boss”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/politics/campaign/25cheney.html
Raging Bee
August 6, 2012 at 12:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The former vice president suggested it wouldn’t have done much good and probably would have sunk President George W. Bush’s prospects for office.
So which is it — not much good, or preventing Bush Jr. from becoming the Worst President Ever?
birgerjohansson
August 6, 2012 at 4:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I am told George W. Bush himself does not have much against gay people, in which case the whole anti-gay agenda was a cold move to use the hate of the “useful idiots” of the Republican base.
(Of course, I doubt many top Republicans believe the “birther” nonsense either, it was just a useful lie)
slc1
August 6, 2012 at 7:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re birgerjohansson @ #13
As a matter of fact, Bush and his wife, Laura, who supports same sex marriage, have a number of gay friends.
cycleninja
August 6, 2012 at 9:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed wrote:
Not to these people. Politics is EVERYTHING to them.