Mary Cheney's Pregnancy Affects Us All

Townhall ^ | December 7, 2006 | Janice Shaw Crouse PhD, Concerned Women for America

[Mrs. Don-o]

It does raise interesting questions about how Mary Cheney was raised, doesn't it?

[Mrs. Don-o]

Right. Here's to gay couples' Right to Privacy.

[Mrs. Don-o]

The problem isn't just the decision to have your lesbian lover adopt your child. The bigger problem is deliberately conceiving a child via a laboratory procedure and a commercial transaction, for the purpose of deliberately depriving the child of a father.

So, fathers are optional? Why is a child's right to a father optional? Why is it that adults' preferences trump children's rights, every time?

Not that Mary and Heather won't treat their little one well, from a care-and-feeding point of view. But this is a child being acquired as a lovable little critter without a full set of rights --- without a patrimony --- from the git-go.

[oceanview]

the MSM/left runs with this story - because (as you can see from many of the posts here), they know how some of the values voters on the right will react. they want the right to be seen as demonizing Mary Cheney, it drives more independents away.

anyone on this thread who doesn't believe me - just ask Jim Talent. Limbaugh's antics vis-a-vis Michael J Fox, likely cost us that seat.

We have to learn not to personalize this debate by attacking specific individuals, we can win on the values issues when presented in the abstract - but not if we go out there saying "Mary Cheney is bad", or "no lesbians can have babies". Those are losing approaches.

[MassachusettsGOP]

Why is it that adults' preferences trump children's rights, every time?

Because only adults are voters.

[Mrs. Don-o]

If having children per se were the fundamental right of every person, no matter how you go about it, then children would be reduced to commodities: property to be bought, sold, traded, leased, patented, produced, and distributed. Low-income single men would have a right to have childbearng concubines provided by the state. Single women who can't find or don't want a normal relationship with a an, would have a right to subsidized insemination.

But having children is not, in an absolute sense, a right: what you DO have a right to, is to marry a person with whom you can have an honest go at natural procreation.

Sometimes because of the vagaries of chance or disease, irresponsibility or tragedy, children are deprived of a natural father or mother. In those cases, adoption is a very good option to respond to the needs of the child. But no child shold be deliberately deprived of a father by design, simply to provide for the preferences of powerful adults.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

"...we can win on the values issues when presented in the abstract..."

Keep saying that. Loudly and often!

Conservativism ALWAYS wins on IDEAS. You're right that we can't let it get personal. We can in our own homes, of course, but as a national platform for the GOP? It's political suicide.

However...the 'Rats can demonize any one of us for any old reason and get away with it. It sucks, but that's how the game seems to be played these days. *SHRUG*

I have no problem being held to a higher standard. Wish our CongressCritters felt the same way. :(

[MEGoody]

This country was so much better when degeneracy was called degeneracy.

Yep.

[MEGoody]

of all the God given rights bestowed upon a woman, that's a biggie.

Sure is. Too bad these two didn't decide to do things God's way. Ah, but they will stand before Him some day, as we all will.

[Howlin]

as we all will.

You better hope you're right in your thinking that God is on your side.

[MEGoody]

You do realize any judge can find a psychiatrist who will call homophobia a mental disorder.

You can also find psychiatrists who call homosexuality a mental disorder. What's your point?

[MEGoody]

You better hope you're right in your thinking that God is on your side.

If by 'my side' you mean knowing that same gender sex is a sin, He is. He told us in His word.

[oceanview]

and you want government to enforce, through laws, all of your ideas? how is the goivernment going to stop a single woman from getting pregnant is she wants to, with a law making her a criminal? same with a lesbian?

[Hildy]

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Are you insane?

[veronica]

You have FReepmail.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Sigrid Undset's short novel, Jenny, which was written in 1911, includes an episode where the main character, an artist, conceives a child with a lover totally unsuitable for marriage, and decides not to tell him she's pregnant but just to go off and have the baby on her own. I'm sure there have been women who have done this throughout history: wanted a baby, but did not want a man.

In a way, the sexual "orientation" of the woman is not the main point. The main point is that in most of the history of civilization this would be seen as a child being born into a broken situation.

I think that what causes consternation now, is that this is seen more and more as an unimpeachable lifestyle option: first with radical groups in the early 70's like the Boston Women's Health Collective, then as a commonplace thing on the Left Coast (the Berzerkeley Inseminator Baby Boom), and now --- this is the kicker --- among the conservative Republicans.

It creates the impression that nobody can be relied upon to even acknowledge that this is a broken situation, that children are being brought into existence fatherless by plan and by design; that the child is going to be intentionally deprived of the male line --- a dad --- a patrimony--- because the grown-ups want it that way.

[marajade]

" ... you mean knowing that same gender sex is a sin..."

This thread is about Ms. Cheney having a child. I'm just not getting how you are connecting the two.

[Howlin]

Oh, we could never understand how the moral absolutists' minds work, marajade.

[Howlin]

If that Freepmail is explaing what the hell is going on on these threads, send it to me, too. :-)

[marajade]

Its always someone else's sin with them instead of their own. And their superior attitude that they are just "better" than everybody else because of what they think they "believe".