A Kerry Flip-Flop On Homosexuality?

As the whole world knows by now, Kerry’s gratuitous reference to the “lesbian” daughter of Dick and Lynne Cheney was in response to a question asking whether homosexuality was genetically determined or a matter of choice. Kerry said that if you asked Mary Cheney (something, by the way, he’s never done), she would say it was not a choice. Presumably being a Republican and the daughter of someone on the Republican ticket makes her more of an expert on these matters than any Democratic lesbian he could have cited, if indeed he needed to cite anyone in particular.

Whatever, now he seems to have waffled even on the absence of “choice” in this area. Listen to the following justification of his comment, given in an interview with CNN correspondent Candy Crowley:

“It was meant as a very constructive comment and a positive thing. I respect their love for their daughter, and I respect who she is, as they do,” Kerry said. “I think it was a way of saying, look, she’s who she is. I have great respect for her, great respect for them.”

“It was entirely [meant] as an example of how people come together around these choices, entirely constructively and respectfully.” [emphasis added]

So now there are “choices”?

I said in the immediately preceding post that this was Kerry’s “McCarthyite moment,” but comparing Kerry to Sen. McCarthy may have been too kind. Actually, he calls to mind one of the most famous innuendoes in American politics, George Smathers’ slander of Sen. Claude Pepper (D, Fla.) in their bitter 1950 primary that Smathers won. Smathers blasted Pepper before rural Florida audiences for having a sister who was a well-known thespian, a brother who was a practicing homo sapiens, and for asserting that Pepper himself had openly matriculated at the University of Florida. (Here is one reference to these historic comments; Googling “Pepper and Smathers” turns up many more. Smathers often denied making them once he got to the Senate, but when journalist Richard Cohen tried to nail it down “his secretary said he couldn’t be reached.”)

Say What? (2)

  1. Stephen October 19, 2004 at 8:32 am | | Reply

    Kerry is caught on the horns of a dilemma with his own constituency here.

    The gay left has always maintained two completely inconsistent stances: male heterosexuality is defined as innate from birth, female homosexuality is defined as a choice.

    The reasons go back to the sexual politics of the 90s, when feminism and gay activism were dominant. Gay men argued that you couldn’t hold them accountable for their sexuality, because they were just made that way. Feminist lesbians argued just the opposite… that female homosexuality was caused by the sexual and physical abuse of fathers. In fact, feminists often called on other women to consciously choose to be lesbians in order to escape from the sexual and physical abuse of fathers.

    So, it’s innate for one sex and a choice for the other. Kerry must walk a fine line here.

  2. jean-paul October 19, 2004 at 2:26 pm | | Reply

    “Gratuitous”? Please. In the vice presidential debate, where Mary Cheney was brought up for the first time in this campaign (she had already been mentioned in the vp debate in 2000, viewed by tens of millions), Gwen Ifill, the moderator, is the one who actually mentioned Mary Cheney’s sexuality first.

    And it is not an invasion of her privacy, as Andrew Sullivan points out in his skewering of Safire’s article, from which you seem to have taken the word ‘gratuitous.’

    Also, I find Stephen’s “the gay left has _always_ maintained” to be bit monolithic/generalized. I think he would have a hard time backing that up.

    Read Sullivan’s TNR piece.

    http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=SBIIYDBlGxxAOnd4HOflVR%3D%3D

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