the awesome/terrifying freedom

andrew sullivan gives the most cogent response to the mary cheney flack which has been inexplicably unleashed upon kerry.

sullivan describes people's response to the comment as a rorschach test revealing people's latent homophobia. if you believe that homosexuality is something to be shameful of, then you saw kerry as 'stooping to low blows.' if you think homosexuality is a fact of life and no different than if he mentioned that bush's daughters are twins, then you saw kerry using a fact to reveal the hipocrisy in the bush administration.

in a weird way it reminds me of some of the emails i used to get when this blog was largely centered on whether or not clay aiken was gay. many people wrote to me feeling that my statement was a defamation. amazing, really. it just proves how far we all have left to go.

i'm boggled, though why cheney would be so upset at kerry's remark, when he had nothing to say but 'thanks' when edwards brought up the same fact in their debate. perhaps the bush campaign sees this as kerry's only possible misstep (like his 'global test' statement in debate #1), however feeble and illogical, and are doing everything they can to use it as a sounding board for statements like "what a cheap and tawdry political trick."

ahem. what's the trick in recognizing a woman who used to run gay outreach for coors and who appears in public with her lesbian lover?