Stork raving mad
It was after an early morning frenzy of dish washing, lunch making and bill paying that I finally was able to settle in with Thursday’s newspaper and see the article about the pregnancy of Mary Cheney, who is the vice president’s daughter. Mary is a lesbian and, unsurprisingly, so is her partner, Heather Poe.
There’s nothing like a birth announcement to warm the heart, right?
“Not only is she doing a disservice to her child, she’s voiding all the effort her father put into the Bush administration,” said Janice Shaw Crouse, senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the think tank run by Concerned Women for America.
Poor Dick Cheney. Wonder how he’s holding up? Well, according to a statement released by him and his wife, they are “looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of their sixth grandchild.”
It looks like the Cheneys reside in the real world, where families come in all forms. Unlike Crouse, who dwells in a fantasyland where dads work and moms stay home reciting Bible verses to all the little children of the world.
“The best thing we can do for a child is to provide a father and a mother,” groused Crouse, stealing a rare moment when her kids could cope without her.
Relax, lady. Mary Cheney is having a baby, and there’s nothing we should do about it. That child will have two parents. It has an excellent shot at a happy, productive life, especially with such doting grandparents.
Crouse is right – up to a point. It is better for a child if there are two parents. Whether one of those parents needs to be a father is debatable. Studies thus far haven’t produced empirical evidence that a child is comparatively worse off under two women.
What we do know is that single parenthood provides greater risks for the children. But, again, what should we do about that? Should widows and widowers be forced to remarry immediately or put their children up for adoption? Should single moms of irresponsible fathers do the same?
Since traditional-family groups aren’t willing to go that far, I’m forced to conclude that this isn’t about the children.
Cold cash. One of my obsessions is the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program. That’s why they call me Mr. Excitement. Anyway, the program is designed to help poor people with their energy bills so they don’t freeze in the winter or overheat in the summer. It’s the perfect example of government failing to meet a basic need because politicians have deemed the cost to be prohibitive. The bogus nature of that argument is downright chilling.
LIHEAP began 25 years ago, and it served about 2.5 million more people then than it does now. In 1981, Congress allocated $2.1 billion. In 2005, it was $2.2 billion. If LIHEAP funding had been tied to the Consumer Price Index, its current budget would be about $4.6 billion.
But that’s a lot of money, and these are tough times. In fact, so tough NASA is undertaking a $100 billion effort to return to the moon and build a permanent base there. Never mind that it has struggled to establish a base closer to Earth and has fallen short on delivering scientific breakthroughs.
How about doing it this way? First, Congress makes sure people aren’t shivering through the winter and then it considers another trip to the moon. One LIHEAP for man. One giant leap for mankind.