As far as I can tell, Big Time Dick and the missus are upset that John Kerry thinks that their lesbian daughter should have the same rights as everyone else. 
The link in your quote is broken
Calling a lesbian a lesbian is not a cheap shot. Did we learn nothing from that Very Special Episode of “Designing Women”?
Yeah, even if they’re Republican! 
Didn’t Vice President Cheney publically talk about his daughter being gay a few weeks back?
At a town hall meeting in Iowa in August, Dick Cheney responded to a question about same sex marriage by saying, “Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue our family is very familiar with.” He went on to say that he thought it was something that should be left to the states to decide, implictly disagreeing with the “Family Marriage Amendment” Bush supports.
Also, a quote from Mary Grant, a friend of Dick and Lynne Cheney since high school, about Mary Cheney being openly gay:
I kinda think if it is now our business whether or not the president gets a blowjob then it is also our business exactly how our current administration feels about the VP’s lesbian daughter. I’m sick of one party deciding what’s cool to bring up and talk about and what’s not. You want to be the president or VP of the United States, I wanna know about the shit stains in your underwear. Don’t claim it’s “not cool” to talk about.
If the VP is afraid that talking about, or taking clear positions about his own family is “uncool” because it may effect how people vote for him, then he has no business being VP. It’s almost like being blackmailable, and anyone who can be blackmailed shouldn’t be elected to public office, much less granted a high level security clearance.
I swear… that episode of Designing Women as Eugenia Weeks(no, I didn’t have to look it up) and her role in Once Bitten are all Karen Kopins will be remembered for.
Amazing that saying someone is lesbian or gay when they ARE could be considered a slur for political gain.
That this subject has even reached the GD board proves that this feigned slight was worth the Republicans effort to deflect the fact that Bush lost all three debates.
The Republicans have nothing else to grab onto at this point.
Lynne Cheney may have been sincerely outraged. The reason is that she is ashamed of her daugter, and considers a mention of lesbianism akin to saying that a family member is an alcoholic.
Cheney clearly was not, and only spoke out after the focus groups showed that Kerry might be vulnerable to such an attack.
As it developed, it became a way to divert attention from Bush getting the piss beat out of him in the debates.
In other words, the only sincere outrage was bigoted outrage.
On the other hand, what Kerry did was: say this, as Timothy Noah put it:
In other words, Kerry was pointing out that Bush and Cheney, for all their talk about having values and standing up for this and that, are just cynical politicians at heart, even when it comes to members of their own families.
How do you explain the positive lesbian portrayals in Lynne Cheney’s novel, then?
The same way I explain George Bush bragging about how he could drink and drive and his daddy would fix everything so it didn’t matter: she woke up and saw the “light” later on when she became a big mover and shaker in the right-wing social scene.
And his campaign manager. And works in doing gay outreach on behalf of the Republican party.
Neither did Cheney, then. She must be really steamed!
Except, of course, for doing public outreach to the gay community and being used by her father as a way to soften his image.
He didn’t: he invoked her name as a gay person that Bush and Cheney know personally, to expose that Bush’s answer was complete bullshit.
A lot can happen between 1981 and now.
This whole thing angry thing on the part of the Cheneys is so obviously a political ploy.
Cheney certainly doesn’t hesitate to bring Mary up when it is to his advantage to look like a compassionate conservative: ‘Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue our family is very familiar with.’ Cheney said."
Here, by the way, are Alan Keyes full remarks for which Lynne Cheney did not see fit to label him a bad man:
But I can see how the remark from Kerry would be far more offensive:
Yeah, it makes perfect sense. :rolleyes:
In other words, you can my daughter a selfish hedonist and I’ll turn the other cheek, but you say my daughter is one of God’s children…thems fighting words!
“I’m surprised, frankly, that you would even repeat the quote, and I’m not going to dignify it with a comment,” is turning the other cheek?
As I noted before "“I’m surprised, frankly, that you would even repeat the quote, and I’m not going to dignify it with a comment,” is precisely the sort of careful, political answer you can expect from the Cheneys. Instead of actually coming out and stating contradiction of Keyes’ views, they say something that sounds like displeasure but that avoids any particular statements or response to his charges. This isn’t defending Mary so much as craftily avoiding a sticky situation.
versus
This woman knows how to demonstrate outrage. The top one was for calling her daughter a selfish hedonist. The bottom one was for calling her daughter a child of God. Just concede this point, Walloon.
You got to like the use of “tawdry” though. There is a word that just doesn’t get used enough in political discourse nowadays.