Where Are Your Family Values Now?

Until today, it would have been hard for me to come up with someone who, in comparison with Dick Cheney, made Cheney look noble. Well, outside of those beyond the pale like Hitler or Stalin. But Alan Keyes has managed it. Yep, in comparison to Keyes, Cheney is positively gay friendly.

You see, Keyes has disowned his daughter for being a lesbian. This shows Keyes' true view of family values. Families don't stick together through thick or thin, no matter what. No. When someone in the family does something Keyes doesn't like, he tells them not to let the door hit them in the ass.

Which brings up an interesting point. Keyes, for all his talk of morality and family values, doesn't seem to understand the obligations involved with bringing a child into the world. Making a person isn't like writing a book where you have complete control over how it turns out. It is implicit in the act of making a child that one day that child will turn into an adult person, and that, as a free person, he or she may (will) make decisions you don't like. But, by having a child, you become that child's parent for the rest of your life and that entails certain obligations, like providing love and support. You can never not be that child's mother or father, and so those obligations do not disappear no matter how much you disagree with the child's choices.

If you don't want to have potentially deal with a gay son or a lesbian daughter, you have a choice: Don't have kids. Once you choose to have them anyway, you have undertaken the obligation of being that kid's parent in the full knowledge that the kid could turn out gay, lesbian, or something else you don't like, and you have to fulfill that obligation regardless.

The right likes to talk about personal responsibility. Well, Dick Cheney is fulfilling his responsibility to his gay daughter. Alan Keyes is not.