But. In my mind there’s a difference between being a queer person and carefully weighing the issues, and deciding that one must vote for Republican candidates even though you know they’re likely to also work against your family’s safety, and being a queer person who is actively working and stragegizing to INSTALL the leaders of that party into a position of power. On the one hand you’re just making the best choice out of a bad situation, on the other you’re working to limit those choices in the first place.

My point is that when you’re working to limit choices and options for people, while at the time being in such a position that those limits don’t apply to you, or apply to you only marginally, then you’re acting unethically (and that, of course, is only my opinion). And you’re acting from a place of privilege. And I haven’t really noticed many people talking about the place of class (and, dare I say it, race) privilege that Mary Cheney is operating from.

I also acknowledge that I may be biased and bull-headed and ungenerous in this.

The one response I have is this. It’s much more complicated if you are a lesbian with conservative political values than if you are a lesbian with liberal values anyway. The anti-gay stuff is only one thing the Republican party stands for. It’s not the only thing.

I think many people don’t find that any one party truly stands for everything they believe. So, they have to make choices.

For example, I read a great editorial before election day several years ago in a Catholic newspaper I used to get. The priest writing the editorial urged Catholics to consider multiple issues before voting, basically saying you weren’t fulfilling your Catholic duty to vote if you didn’t consider more than one issue. A lot of Catholics just vote for the “pro-life” candidate. (I’m pro-choice, for the record.) He basically was coming from this position. Many Catholics are anti-abortion, and that candidate is more likely to be Republican. Those same Catholics, however, if they really care about “life issues”, should also vote for the anti-death penalty candidate, who is more likely the Democrat. The “anti-euthanasia” candidate is more likely Republican. And then if you’re a good Catholic, you need to look beyond “life issues” and consider “social justice issues”, which are more likely supported by the Democrat. I’m not defending any of these beliefs or choices. I’m just using this as an example of how some people can find their values not aligned with any one party.

I think it’s much easier when one has liberal political leanings anyway… then one just chooses to be a Democrat. I can definitely see why some people would want to be Republicans, even though they hate that the party does not support LGBTQ issues. For example, they could think that the government that governs best, governs least and could be in favor of smaller government. (You’d never know it from W’s presidency, but that’s a huge part of what the party traditionally stands for.) They may just not want a “tax and spend” government. There are a number other things as well that they could support about the party. If one of the only things about the Democrats that you agree with is their support of LGBTQ issues, then it’s a tough choice to make.

While I shudder to realize that I’m about to compare myself to Mary Cheney, and I don’t have the same class privileges that Chaney does, I am acutely aware of the fact that my family would not be where it is if it were not for the class privileges we have.

We pretty much spent down all of our “regular emergency” savings in the process of adopting Noah. Between the lawyer’s fees and then the insane and unexpected expense of having to move, and then having to pay for a home study we didn’t expect, we were tapped out.

But we had it to tap out. We had the resources to choose to make our family legally secure.

And although it’s going to mean making some changes to our budget and operations, by the time #2 exists, we expect to be able to make that choice again.

Ironically, I think Mary Cheney is actually going to make it more difficult for lesbian families in Virgina to make their families secure.

When we lived there, the common legal advice to lesbian families was that they should move to Maryland or DC, even if that move was not permanent. I think now that “recent transplants” from Virginia will have their efforts to adopt scrutinized more closely.

And if Mary & Heather do move to Bethesda or Potomac so they can legally secure their family, I think that scrutiny will increase tenfold — not just for them, for everyone.

(Plus, I can say from experience, Mary’s commute will utterly suck. If I’d stayed in my original job where she works, she’d be my boss right now, and I did approximately that commute once/month. It.Was.The.Worst.)