the gay thing

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Lowest Blow

On Mary Cheney’s sexual orientation (not lifestyle) William Safire’s Monday column says: “Until that moment, only political junkies knew that a member of the Cheney family serving on the campaign staff was homosexual.”

It’s one thing to see the paper's resident conservative whine about manners (implying that it’s rude to recognize someone’s sexuality in public) rather than dismantle the poverty in our public political discourse to discuss sexuality and orientation.

But it’s another to see that Safire is wrong on a more fundamental level. There’s a whole lot of other people who knew Mary Cheney was gay – the gay community who benefited from at least 10 years of her activism and advocacy, as well as her partner, friends, and colleagues. (Part of her work at Coors was heading up outreach to the gay community so she was definitely out to her firm.)

The point of Kerry's comments is not to 'confuse or dismay' Bush's evangelical base. It's to expose the absurdity and instability of their homophobia. (I'd say confusion and a feeling of dismay is 'dissonance' - the result of recognizing that the foundation of a previously held belief is shaky.) If there is a political gain from it, well, la di da. (And what intellectual dishonesty to not expect that.)

But Safire, and the rest of the conservative party, is blind to that. In his view, only heterosexuals get to be public with their sexuality. A gay person should live in isolated shadow. For Safire, there is no gay community. There is no wider life for a gay or lesbian other than how they relate to straight people. And, for the sake of decorum, there shouldn't be.

I’m sure the gay community thanks him for that.

Safire's column is like a veiled dance, revealing his mannerly homophobia even while trying to conceal it.