the same people who don't want to regulate industrial waste, poisoned food, or toxic drugs get all panicky at the thought of people making their own decisions about sex. Why DO wingers assume EVERYONE will be gay if there aren't rules against it, Oh wait, I think I do know why, but if they would talk non fundies once in a while they might worry less.

I couldn't agree more.

Well over a hundred thousand fathers are missing right now, and it's a serious, serious problem.

Furthermore, they're in danger of going missing permanently, not just on their current tour of duty, should they run into an unfortunately timed RPG, IED, or other weapon of fast destruction on the streets of Iraq.

(Fundies so, so sickening. After a while, it's hard not to scream or vomit every time one of them says something stupid.)

To remember there is goodness in us all, even George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

If every single cultural conservative had a gay child may be cultural conservatism would be less of a threat.

If you are a believer in God, and God as a God of love, it is perhaps his way to open our minds and hearts to let those we love be those we likewise hate.

The primal need to love one's children goes deeper than our primal need to hate those who are different.

I have never bought that Cheney or Bush were the bible thumping quacks that others made them out to be. That their rhetoric to the Christian right was just political gamesmanship, and when push came to shove, their hearts just weren't in it. Their closest family and friends were gay, and they knew it and they couldn't bring themselves to really hurt them.

Do any of you remember the Whitehouse’s early draft of the marriage amendment? It had some very interesting legalistic language in it, most notably a guarantee that states so wishing to do so would have the right to grant civil unions with equal rights to marriage, and that these unions would be respected by the federal government. In that you had what amounted to a progay marriage amendment masquerading as an antigay marriage amendment. Unfortunately, the Christian right thought it was too soft and the left thought it was too hard, and the chance to enshrine equality for gay couples in the constitution was lost.

I do not seek to claim Bush and Cheney are good hearted men played wrong by the media. They are both ruthless politicos who have worked hard to ensure their vision came to fruition at the expense of many many good people.

But they are still husbands, and fathers, and as Bugs Bunny once said, like us all, they were both some body's baby once. Deserving of our respect for being that if for nothing else.

Secondly, whether Mary, Heather and the little one like it, they are all three going to become the 'poster children' for the gay marriage issue. And according to Mary's past statements, she isn't going to be happy about it, which of course, is a shame. Here is a wonderful opportunity for the Vice President to say and/or do something decent. However, Dick will no doubtedly glady offer his dark, cowardly soul to the extreme right-wing base.

What does it say about family values, that the Vice President will most likely not stand up for his own family? What does it say about how much Mr. Cheney values his own grandchild that he will most likely not change his views, in a desperate quest to remain faithful to his partisan constituency ??? Please, Mr. Cheney, prove me wrong.

However,I have a feeling that once again, just like the example of Rev. Haggard, the Republican's will show proof that hypocrisy is the platform of the right-wing agenda.

I hate it equally when the right wing babbles nonsense about "winning the war against international terrorism in Iraq", and when the left wing babbles nonsense about whatever PC high horse they are on this week. The real victim is truthful, honest language conveying accuracy and genuine meaning.

Ms. Cheney may be expecting a baby, but it isn't with her partner, Ms. Poe...because that is biologically impossible. The only possible reality is that she is pregnant by either artificial insemination OR IVF. Ms. Poe isn't involved either way. She may intend to act as an adoptive parent to this child, and perhaps they live in a state where she can legally adopt the baby as well. But there is no way they can be "expecting a child together".

I have noticed that when such lesbian couples split up, the biological parent all of a sudden takes a right hand turn, and decides that the "partner" is not entitled to any shared custody -- biology ends up trumping Political Correctness. (I haven't yet seen this in gay male couples, perhaps because in most of those cases the child is not biologically related to either partner.)

The cold hard truth is that it is impossible for two women, or two men, to conceive a child together that is biologically related to both of them, and a blend of both their DNA. You can't get around this, legislate it into the ground, or drown it in a sea of self-aggrandizing nonsense.

Of course Baby Cheney has a father -- somewhere. Whether a "friend" or a sperm donor, somewhere there is a real biological father (there has to be, after all), although we can probably assume he has signed off on any responsibility to his own child.

Trust me, in time, Baby Cheney will grow up and ask "Where is my REAL FATHER?" Because children are often smarter than their dumb, self-deluded parents -- they know the difference between what is real and what is pretend, even when pretending is enjoyable fun.

It is a terrible tragedy that 38% of all children grow up in households without their biological father. Even worse, a significant number of these children never really know their fathers at all -- some literally having no idea at all. Perhaps the worst tragedy, as one poster here notes, are those children that the Bush administration has robbed of their fathers in a misguided and disasterous war. But why add to the pain and unhappiness of children?

Every child deserves to have both a mother and a father -- not just two "random unrelated adults" (or more -- why stop at two?).