Two-mom families are moving beyond the hurtful barbs

Congratulations aren't just for Vice President Cheney's family, which announced last week that daughter Mary and the woman she has called her wife for 15 years are expecting their first baby.

We all have reason to be proud or at least relieved that the glad news, safely delivered after the November election and before the labor pains of the 2008 campaign, has not been received with the blanket of ugliness that could have been wrapped around it.

Before I tie on too many pink and blue bows, let me say that some in my columnist cohort are correct to point out that pinheads like the people at the Family Research Institute did fire off predictable alarms and insults, calling Cheney and her partner, Heather Poe, "selfish" and worse for bringing a baby into a same-sex home.

Of course, that "think tank" and brain trusts such as Fox News' Bill O'Reilly could be counted on to feign concern for the supposedly perilous futures of such kids. Of course, they'd spew specious statistics about risks and propensities. It's what they do.

But the heartening fact is that the two-mom families raising those kids are not only too busy with real life to be very injured or concerned, they also are no longer as easily hurt by such rants.

They hope and believe that, at least on this issue, the extreme right may be running out of steam.

I see their confidence in the Christmas letters they send me, stuffed with the same happy updates that straight families exchange: school successes, potty-training victories and family vacations.

I see it in the fact that there was a 40 percent increase in the number of people willing to self-identify as same-sex families in the most recent Census Bureau statistics.

And I sense it in the fact that gay and lesbian people I interview are now unflinchingly willing to have their spouses' names in print when, only a handful of years ago, they tended to demur out of protectiveness and fear.

Last week I was chatting with former Seattle City Councilwoman and former Microsoft executive Tina Podlodowski and her partner, Barcy Fisher, about school searches for the older of two kids Podlodowski and Fisher co-parent with Podlodowski's ex, Chelle Mileur, and her life partner.

At first it was the usual stuff, such as how my son likes his school.

But, having just read one of the more vitriolic "news releases" about Cheney's motherhood, I had to ask.

As a fairly public and previously political person, does Podlodowski wince when the Christian Newswire runs stories saying unmarried women "should not deliberately" have children? That their kids are more apt to do poorly in school, disrupt society, engage in crime and be orphaned when their moms die young due to "lifestyle?"

(Mo Malkin, executive director of the Seattle-based lesbian health research project called Verbena, reports there is no factual basis for distortions of science that say lesbians tend to die early because they're lesbians).

Actually, Podlodowski's concern is for the future of the Cheneys' grandchild. How, she wonders, will that child feel when he or she is old enough to Google what Grandma and Grandpa once said about people like their parents and their desire for equal marriage?

One can always hope that "a child shall lead them." That the overpowering love for a grandchild will power over previously held prejudices. But, if it happens, Podlodowski thinks it's doubtful that the senior Cheneys will go public with it.

"The right-wing Republican agenda they've worked for their whole lives seems higher on the list of priorities," Podlodowski said. "It's more important to them to engage the far right and keep them part of the party than to say this is my family, and that's OK."

Within their own family, the Cheneys may well be accepting, even celebratory. But it would surprise Podlodowski if that acceptance spilled over to benefit others in terms of public policy.

Still, it's cause for at least a couple of baby-shower balloons that same-sex families no longer ache with each condemnation.

"I just don't think this kind of hate has much traction anymore," Podlodowski said.

Not that long ago in both my life and hers, there were dire predictions for the children of mixed-race pairs. Now, neither her kids nor mine even seem to register the race of friends they hang out with, dance with and date.

Fear was still a handy tool to wield during the last election, but not a very effective one. People proved more concerned about the toll of war and the lack of health care than whether the parents next to them on the high school bleachers buttoned their shirts on the same side.

"Ultimately I'm an optimist about our ability to get past this stuff," Podlodowski said.

So congratulations to Mary and Heather -- and to the rest of the thinking, feeling, hate-resistant humans who may soon hear homosexual fear only as a distant death rattle.

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