Dear Mary,
I'm writing to let you know that I think you are what is wrong with America.
No, not because you are a lesbian. But because you are a self-loathing lesbian.
It's really a shame that you've not yet been able to love yourself unconditionally for who you are. When I see you on TV, I can tell deep down part of you is always apologizing for being gay. It's a shame, it's a failure of our society, and it's really quite sad.
And, frankly, it's very dangerous.
Clearly, it must be difficult to have a father who, despite whatever love he professes for you, always despises a part of you so viciously. It's clear your father is a hateful man, and I have no doubt this is the example you were given - to hate, to fear others, to despise. So, really I don't blame you for secretly hating yourself. Maybe you're too good natured to let that hate seep outward, and you turn it inward by default, which in someway, I suppose, is commendable.
What I do blame you for, though, is your obvious betrayal of your lover, your community, your ancestors, and most importantly, yourself.
You say that George W. Bush is a good man, but on some issues, like your own civil rights, he "hasn't caught up." In my mind, Mary, the fact that he has yet to "catch up" makes him a bad man. The simple truth that he would use hatred towards people like you and me, gay Americans, for political advantage makes him a bad man. And that's just the best case scenario. At worst, he might not even see us as equal citizens and human beings. This makes him not only a bad man, but your own natural enemy.
To be fair, I agree with you that there are many things that George W. Bush needs to "catch up" on, and sadly I suspect most of them involve the fundamental lessons of getting along and sharing that the rest of us learned in kindergarten. But you choose to apologize for his shortcomings, even when those very shortcoming threaten your safety and livelihood.
There was once another Republican President who took a little while to "catch up" when something was threatening the well-being of the gay community. By the time he got around to doing so, thousands and thousands of us were infected with a preventable disease, for which there was, and still is, no cure. As a result a pandemic was unleashed on this Earth, and an entire generation of gay people, our fore-mothers and especially our fore-fathers, were killed. Eliminated. That president's name was Ronald Reagan, and the disease is called AIDS. Ever heard of them? And, during previous periods in history, what happened to our community might have been called genocide.
My point is, Mary, you seem so fucking patient! You seem to have so much time on your hands to sit around and wait for the President, and presumably your father, to "catch up."
My question to you, Mary, is why don't you encourage them to hurry it along? Why don't you do everything in your power to speed this process up? Why don't you draw a line in the sand and refuse to have anything to do with your father and his boss until they stop pursing an agenda to persecute you?
You don't have to respond, Mary, because I already know the answers to those questions. You don't do anything because you choose not to. Which brings me back to my original point: you are what is wrong with America.
This country was founded and built by Patriots. People not afraid to stand up for what they believed in, to rise and defend themselves and the well being of those they loved, to be counted. For this act, they faced the possibility of terrible things, including death, but they were undeterred. You, by contrast, are a coward. You refuse your duty and betray your community.
Let's be honest, Mary. Things are a lot different today for us gay Americans then they were, say, forty years ago. We're still targeted by intolerant, hateful people, we still face daily, public discrimination. Some of us are, on occasion, murdered because of who we are, but despite all that, all in all there's never been a better time to be a homosexual in America. I mean, really, forty years ago would the lesbian daughter of the vice president have sat front and center at the Convention nominating her father ... with her girlfriend? I think not. It would have been dangerous to even walk through downtown DC hand-in-hand. You and me, we're so lucky, so blessed to live today, during a time when the advantages of "coming out" outweigh those of "staying in."
How, dear Mary, do you suppose these things came to be? How do you suppose mainstream America slowly, finally, began to "catch up" to the fact that we were important, valuable, equal members of this society? How do you think we went from being invisible to visible?
It's because, thank God, there were Patriots in the gay community. They're were wonderful, angry, intelligent homos who finally had enough of living in the shadows and being denied the right to be themselves. And they stood up, and they shouted, and they fought back. And they faced enormous hatred, physical violence, arrest, isolation and many more despicable things. But they persevered, and they earned you and me the right to sit at the bar with our lovers and kanoodle without the fear of being arrested or murdered.
You, Mary Cheney, are squandering what your ancestors earned for you. You enjoy the freedom bought with their blood and tears, and then you sit by, complacent, as those very freedoms are chipped slowly away. You with the greatest access, waste it.
Mary, you are what is wrong with America. You're un-Patriotic. You've betrayed your own community. You've committed treason against us.
I feel sorry for you. I pity you. But you deserve our contempt.
May the ghost of some fabulously vicious drag queen from the Stonewall era haunt your dreams ...