A few people have noted their discomfort with the reference by the Democratic candidates, first in the Veep Debate and again last night, to the fact that the daughter of Vice President Cheney is openly gay. One of the commentators on FoxNews last night went so far as to claim that the mere mention of that fact by John Kerry was the low point in the debate, while Mickey Kaus asked "What if Kerry were debating a conservative on affirmative action, and that conservative had a black wife, and Kerry gratuitously brought that up in an attempt to cost his opponent the racist vote?"

Well, let's try a little thought experiment. The equivalent time in the struggle for equality with African Americans would have been 1962, when the momentum was clearly moving in the direction of the supporters of civil rights, but a large and seemingly impregnable section of the country was resistent, and seemed to have the political power to thwart progress in that area. Imagine a gubernatorial race in Tennessee, or Missouri, or some other border state, between a candidate with "moderate" views on civil rights for that time (ie., dismantling much of Jim Crow, supporting a ban on lynching, greater voting rights), and a candidate with, shall we say, views more in line with the Confederacy, who claimed that his opposition to civil rights came not because he was a racist, but because he opposed the "intrusion" of the federal government into local matters.

Let's also say that the Dixiecrat had a daughter, who had attended college up north, become a lawyer, joined her father's campaign staff, and, incidentally, was married to a black man. Would it be inappropriate for the moderate candidate to mention that fact during the campaign, in the context of calling for a more free and open society, especially if the Dixiecrat was running on a platform that included support for anti-miscegenation laws? Of course not; one of the reasons the walls of bigotry inevitably fall is that they ultimately reach us at where we are most vulnerable, in our backyards and with our families. Does it make Dick Cheney, and the rest of us, uncomfortable? Of course; it should.

It really is no different than asking Michael Dukakis in 1988 how he would feel about the death penalty if it was his wife who was the victim. If conservatives really do have a non-homophobic reason for supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, then dealing with the fact that people they know and care about are affected by their stance is obligatory.