# Fuck yeah! (Cheney on gay marriages) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 25, 2004, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-yeah-cheney-on-gay-marriages/261458 "2004-08-25T16:19:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-yeah-cheney-on-gay-marriages/261458/41 "2004-08-27T00:29:35Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > It was okay in your book when Clinton was a weasel wasn’t it? I beg you to have your dosages checked. And no, it wasn’t OK when Clinton was a weasel. Clinton lost my vote in 1996 because of the SSM issue. But hey NEWSFLASH, dumbass, _this isn’t about Clinton_. It’s not about Kerry, or Edwards, or Gus the Field Goal Kicking Mule. It’s about **Cheney** and his craven flip-flop. It’s about Cheney. Cheney. Dick Cheney. Try to keep that in mind. > [@Polycarp](#): > > And I still maintain that it’s Cheney saying actually how he feels, as opposed to having to toe the party line out of loyalty to Bush. Then he should have kept his fucking mouth shut during the amendment push. ---
**Author:** ![SolGrundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@SolGrundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SolGrundy)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-yeah-cheney-on-gay-marriages/261458/42 "2004-08-27T00:36:06Z")
> [@threemae](#): > > I cannot quite figure out exactly what it is that you people expect Cheney to do. Simple. Make a real stand on same-sex marriage and stick with it. Ideally, if he truly supported that it be left to individual states to decide, he would’ve protested his administration’s attempts to have a constitutional amendment banning it on the federal level. Just because you don’t have direct voting power over a measure doesn’t mean that you can’t influence it. What, is George not returning his phone calls or something? The big issue, though, is what “we people” expect _others_ to do. To start with, don’t praise Cheney as being pro-gay and taking a bold stand against his administration by speaking according to his conscience. Because that’s not what he’s doing. When the issue was being decided, he said openly that he supported the administration’s attempts to ban SSM. Now that the issue’s been voted on and that they’ve seen it doesn’t have as much political clout as they’d hoped, he’s going back and saying that he’s always left it for the states to decide. And for some bizarre reason, people are eating it up. The so-called “Log Cabin Republicans” are praising him on their website as a promoter of gay rights. He’s simply not. At best, he’s being completely non-committal of it. The reason people are dismissing it as a political ploy is because he made the speech to a **campaign audience**. So now people can point to it and say “fuck yeah!” and “see, not all Republicans are bigoted monsters!” To which I say, how is that good or deserving of praise? If he was so ineffectual at stopping the constitutional amendment from getting to the point of a vote in the first place, what is he going to do the next time Bush starts dropping in the polls and needs to use fear and homophobia to boost up his ratings with a “defense of marriage” ploy? The only time I’ve seen Cheney “sincerely express his opinion” is when he was telling people to go to fuck themselves. > [@threemae](#): > > Don’t take too much from my sig; I just thought it was a good quote. The LBJ poster in my room is far less than 6x8 feet. For the record, LBJ wasn’t always a VP, ya’ know (some dude got stabbed or somethin’) and at any rate the quote doesn’t really refer to inaction in the face of clear moral decisions. In fact, it is quite the opposite, it refers to how easy it is to take actions you believe to be moral and correct, but how often we err in coming to that determination. Am I misinterpreting my own sig here? If I am, you can be damn sure I’ll want to know about it. Your sig was just a convenient springboard for the point I was trying to make, no other implications there. The quote says that it’s easy to act with the wrong intentions; I was merely pointing out that you can also have the best of intentions and foil it through inaction, and that doesn’t deserve any praise. ---
**Author:** ![SolGrundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@SolGrundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SolGrundy)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-yeah-cheney-on-gay-marriages/261458/43 "2004-08-27T00:43:03Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > “I support him” is not the same as “I agree with him.” It’s a weasely way for a politician to deal with a politically volitle issue. What do you want Cheney to do, go out and campaign against Bush? Be real. What do you want _us_ to do? Go out and say, “Fuck yeah! The vice president is a weasely politician!” We’re just pointing out that making Cheney out to be some hero of the gay rights movement is absurd. > [@John Mace](#): > > I suppose you’re just as incensed that Kerry, during his campaign, said Edwards was not qualified to be president and yet chose him as his VP. Is Kerry 100% sure he’ll not be incapacitated during his term in office? What does that have to do with anything? If we’re 100% against Bush & Cheney on an issue, that means we’re automatically 100% for Kerry and Edwards? Kerry is anti-same sex marriage as well; his stance is almost identical to what Cheney is now _claiming_ is his stand. And I’m not going to be praising Kerry as a champion of gay rights any more than I praise Cheney. Because he’s not. Fortunately, though, there are plenty of more important or equally issues that I do agree with Kerry about, and Kerry is not directly threatening to set back gay rights with idiotic political power-play attempts to alter the Constitution. When you have to decide between the guy who’s actively breaking into your house, and the guy who’s merely telling people that it would be fine with him if someone else broke into your house, you take the latter. ---
**Author:** ![threemae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f9b8f/32.png) [@threemae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threemae)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-yeah-cheney-on-gay-marriages/261458/44 "2004-08-27T03:12:00Z")
> [@SolGrundy](#): > > Your sig was just a convenient springboard for the point I was trying to make, no other implications there. The quote says that it’s easy to act with the wrong intentions; I was merely pointing out that you can also have the best of intentions and foil it through inaction, and that doesn’t deserve any praise. Or, actually it says **exactly** the opposite, but hey, whatever, I don’t want to damage your springboard. How exactly is a VP directly contradicting the president and helping to bring the matter front and center to discussion inaction? If that’s the case, then I’m sick of all those pinko liberals demonstrating and writing letters and changing votes and opionions and all that stuff becasue it’s really just and excuse for inaction. Couldn’t Cheney start a coup or do something along those lines? Really now. ---
**Author:** ![SolGrundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@SolGrundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SolGrundy)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-yeah-cheney-on-gay-marriages/261458/45 "2004-08-27T06:47:04Z")
> [@threemae](#): > > Or, actually it says **exactly** the opposite, but hey, whatever, I don’t want to damage your springboard. What? It says “doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what’s right.” How is that “exactly the opposite” of “it’s easy to act with the wrong intentions?” I’ll admit that I can be dense at times, but I think I’m plenty capable of understanding the sage wisdom of **LBJ** , for Chrissakes. > [@threemae](#): > > How exactly is a VP directly contradicting the president and helping to bring the matter front and center to discussion inaction? > > If that’s the case, then I’m sick of all those pinko liberals demonstrating and writing letters and changing votes and opionions and all that stuff becasue it’s really just and excuse for inaction. Couldn’t Cheney start a coup or do something along those lines? Really now. And there you go. It’s a liberal vs. conservative issue. Fuck that. It’s an issue of what’s wrong vs. what’s right. I’ve already said that the “liberal hero” John Kerry is not a supporter of gay rights. What the hell? Cheney had a chance to make his views known when this administration was acting to bring about an unfair constitutional amendment. He didn’t; he maintained that he supported the administration in whatever it did. That’s worse than inaction. That’s acting against your conscience. In other words, knowing what is right and _still_ doing what’s wrong. Hence the quote. So now, after it’s already been decided on the federal level (for now), and it helps the party to soften their edge so as not to be seen as too bigoted, he does a flip-flop during a campaign speech. And he’s to be _praised_ for saying he was against the amendment all along? Really now. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-yeah-cheney-on-gay-marriages/261458/46 "2004-08-27T07:00:49Z")
I’m interested reading the nuanced level of debate here how many of you have law degrees. Are Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kerry and Edwards all lawyers, incidentally? ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2004, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-yeah-cheney-on-gay-marriages/261458/47 "2004-08-27T08:13:39Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > I’m interested reading the nuanced level of debate here how many of you have law degrees. I don’t have a law degree. I have a paralegal certificate. > [@roger thornhill](#): > > Are Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kerry and Edwards all lawyers, incidentally? Cheney has a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Wyoming. Rumsfeld has a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. Kerry has a bachelor’s from Yale and a law degree from Boston College. Edwards has a bachelor’s from North Carolina State University and a law degree from the University of North Carolina. Not sure why you’re asking about Rumsfeld… ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2004, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-yeah-cheney-on-gay-marriages/261458/48 "2004-08-28T10:21:27Z")
Thanks for the info. I mentioned Rumsfeld I always think of Rumsfeld/Cheney as a kind of double act, Don having taken Dick under his wing in his early days in Washington. The Ford era if I recall correctly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-yeah-cheney-on-gay-marriages/261458.md?page=2)