First of all, I have to compliment my readers for resisting commentary on the phrase “My father had Speedball nibs” which was nestled in yesterday’s post. Damned mature of everyone, I must say, unless Jobie hasn’t read the post yet.

Now we’re off to a hospital holiday function, but before I go, a liberal rant:

So Mary Cheney is going to have a baby. I think that is fabulous, and I wish her and Heather the best.

This is not to say that I am not watching with raised eyebrows and pursed lips the inevitable reactions from Cheney pere’s constituency. One can really not make this stuff up.

For example, according to an AP story,

Carrie Gordon Earll, a policy analyst for the conservative Christian ministry Focus on the Family, expressed empathy for the Cheney family but depicted the newly announced pregnancy as unwise.

“Just because you can conceive a child outside a one-woman, one-man marriage doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,” said. “Love can’t replace a mother and a father.”

Let’s parse that, shall we? “Love can’t replace a mother and a father.” If we turn that into simple algebra, we get L < M + F. Love is less than a Mother/Father combo.

Is this woman serious? Does she really mean that any child who merely has both a mother and a father is better off than a child who is loved by whoever is in the home? I think she does not teach in an elementary school. I think she does not have friends or acquaintances who work for social service agencies. I think she doesn’t have much contact with the real world.

The current administration and its right-wing cronies are big on touting “research-based” components for school improvement. They’re not so big on research-based anything else, apparently, because study after study shows that children of stable, loving gay couples are no different than children of stable, loving straight couples. (Some studies show they’re better off, but let that pass.)

[Total aside on the “research-based” crap: the current President stunned the world last week when he announced that as far as he was concerned, the violence in Iraq was fueled by an al-Qaeda plot. What?? Not even his own administration supports that view. He just pulled that one out of his capacious anus. So much for evidence and causality.]

The right-wing’s spittle over Ms. Cheney’s pregnancy reminds me of the infanticide trial recently concluded here in Coweta County. That father had a habit of whacking that mother with large, heavy objects, and the baby, unborn, suffered the consequences, dying of blunt trauma. Even though St. Paul would have been proud of the mother’s recantation of her testimony against the father, apparently everyone else in the woman’s life was more than happy to give witness against the father and to convict him of murder.

Tell me, Mrs. Carrie Gordon Earll, which home would you prefer a baby be born into: the Cheney/Poe household, with its parents who have been all but married for fifteen years whether you like it or not, or the Coweta County couple? Your equation tells us the answer: Mother + Father is greater than Love.

I know how my friend Harry Thomas would describe your position, Mrs. Carrie Gordon Earll, but this is a family blog and I can’t repeat his pungent but entirely apt words. But he’s right. You are.