Lesbian to have baby.  Not just any lesbian but the daughter of Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States.

This annunciation has the left and right of US politics all over the place. Is Mary really putting it up to her Dad on his refusal to suport same sex marriage? The Evangelicals are of course apopletic with concerns for this fatherless baby (now that would be an immaculate conception if ever there was one.) The ‘experts’ are also out in force saying lesbians die younger and the child could be orphaned at an early age.

Lesbian and gay family advocates point to the potential birthplace of this baby. Not Bethlehem but VIrginia. (The Joseph in this story is Heather Poe, Cheney’s long term partner.)

Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of Family Pride writes in the Advocate about the difficulties facing the couple and their child in the future.

 Mary and Heather live in Virginia. Unless they move to a handful of less restrictive states, Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child. If something were to happen to Mary and Heather needed to advocate for their child in an emergency room, at school, in the courts, the state of Virginia would not recognize Heather as a parent to their child. If Mary some day chose to deny Heather access to their children in terms of custody or visitation, Heather would have no legal standing to challenge her actions. If Heather chose to walk away from her life with Mary and their family, Mary would have no recourse to pursue child support to help her care for and raise the children that together she and Heather brought into the world.

So all eyes then will be on the trip from Bethlehem Virginia to Nazereth Boston (Where same sex couples can get married.

Julie Bindel in the Guardian gives us a history lesson on pregnant lesbians, the fashion statement that they have become to some and the divisions that lesbians having babies brought about in the lesbian movement.

While the rest of us were getting on with your typical lesbian lifestyle – drinking, fighting, getting tattoos, converting as many women as possible to lezzerism, and frightening normal people in the streets by showing them our hairy armpits and extra fingers – the lesbian parents were submerged in hetero- sexual-style hell. Bathtime and bedtime stories replaced dancing to I Will Survive and I Am What I Am down at the local gay disco.

While her tounge was probably firmly in her cheek for a lot of this article, it did make me laugh as I remembered the arguments in communities and sudden changes that the couples making babies would go through as they became parents. 

 This does not just happen to lesbian communities, many single straight women are also frozen out by the baby talk of their married/coupled friends. I have often sat down one end of the table of the pub with the childless straights engaging in mutual wincing as yet more tales of episiotomies are rolled out by a mother recounting the delivery of child number 3. 

But back to Mary Cheney and her immaculate conception. The daughter of a soon to retire political figure in the USA is having a baby – it won’t make a bit of difference to same sex parents and their families. Her relationship has not impacted US policy so far. I’m sure there will be photo’s and maybe a few books and interviews, but no change in how these families are viewed and supported in the USA.