Word: cheneys
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Asked by moderator Bernard Shaw whether "a male who loves a male and a female who loves a female [should] have all--all--the constitutional rights enjoyed by every American citizen?" neither Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) nor former Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney could respond with an unequivocal...
...best Lieberman could muster was an "I'm thinking about it." For Cheney, more bluntly, the issue was "no slam dunk." Padding their responses with empty rhetoric, both candidates did a poor job of concealing the message their answers conveyed: Implied in the constitutional promise of equal rights for all citizens is an exception clause with respect to gays...
...Cheney, for his part, offered a response no more encouraging. Praised by some for conceding that gay rights could be "regulated by the states," he carved a position for the federal government that is at best ambivalent towards equality for homosexuals and, at worst, antagonistic to any egalitarian-minded legislation. Indeed, while Cheney's position, on one hand, empowers states to equalize the legal status of homosexuals and heterosexuals, on the other hand it gives the federal government an excuse to be apathetic with regard to states who fail to take such progressive steps, or, in a worse scenario, chose...
...some pundits the moral reprehensibility of Lieberman's and Cheney's positions is excused by the fact that both candidates' reservations about equal rights are premised primarily on their hesitancy to officially sanction committed, monogamous homosexual relationships as marriages. Noting that Lieberman is "open to taking some action that will address… unfairness" towards homosexuals and that Cheney "[tries] to be…tolerant of homosexual relationships," such commentators claim that the only thing preventing the candidates from unequivocally supporting equal rights was an inconsequential semantic reluctance to call homosexual unions "marriages...
Semantics, however, were far from the core of the candidates' contentions. When Cheney spoke of preserving "conventional marriages" and Lieberman of "the traditional religious and civil institution of marriage" what the candidates were aiming to preserve was not merely the sanctity of the word marriage, but the deeply entrenched and prejudiced belief that a homosexual union could be neither be conventional nor consistent with the precepts of religion and civil law. At the heart of their arguments was an unwillingness to accept that homosexuals be considered normal, holy and legal equals...