Policy and personal feelings

As everyone has no doubt heard, VP Dick Cheney has said publicly he disagrees with Pres. Bush's policy on gay marriage. (See article here)

(True, the split isn't all that significant--Cheney just says he disagrees with a federal amendment banning gay marriage--an opinion shared by many who still oppose gay marriage on principle, myself included...)

It's cynical (but usually true) to think that any 'personal' statement made by a member of the current political adminstration--especially one facing immediate re-election--has a calculated political component. Try as I might, though, I can't seem to figure out any political benefit of Cheney's remarks. (Trying to soften his image as a 'hard-line' conservative? A little late for that, methinks... Plus, saying he disagrees with the current administration policy isn't likely to increase support for that policy nor for the Bush administration as a whole, is it?)

Perhaps, in Occam's Razor fashion, the simplest explanation is the correct one. Cheney really was sharing just his personal feelings with no political angle whatsoever. Is this good or bad, though?

Many pundits are logically pointing to the Cheneys having a gay daughter as the impetus towards Cheney's break from administration policy. Certainly, his daughter has undoubtedly provided a catalyst of sorts towards a personal reevaluation of how he feels in the matter...but, this begs the question: if Cheney did not have a gay daughter, would his personal opinions still have departed from administration policy? And does the answer to this question matter?

I think it does... Imagine we have a person who's entirely against the death penalty...until one day someone in that person's family is viciously murdered, and afterwards he becomes a death penalty advocate. Or a person who supports the death penalty...until a family member of his is accused of a capital crime and faces the death penalty himself. Imagine we have two women, one ardently pro-life and one pro-choice...until both of them get pregnant unexpectedly and whose new situation leads them both to 180 degree changes of opinion.

It's natural and understandable that people's opinions can be different about policies that only affect 'other people' than when they directly affect yourself or those you are close to. (Imagine polling inmates on death row on how they feel about capital punishment. Do you suppose the results would be higher or lower than a poll of average people off the street?) Is that a proper way to decide policy, though? Someone who has one view of policy without any personal impact, yet would have a completely different view on the policy when family members become involved is (a) somewhat hypocritical and (b) casts doubt on the logical foundation used to make that decision in the first place.

In other words, Cheney's daughter having same-sex attraction herself should have no impact on Cheney's feelings towards same-sex marriage policy, because everyone is someone's son or daughter. If allowing (or banning) gay marriage is 'right', then it is 'right' for everyone (Ditto for abortion, death penalty, military draft, etc...) and if you're sitting there thinking 'abortion is wrong...but I'd want my unmarried daughter to have one if she got pregnant' then doesn't that cast doubt on the basis for your reasoning for abortion being 'wrong' in the first place? Right and wrong aren't relative... Cheney can support or oppose a federal marriage amendment if he wants--but if it happens that the status of his family did have a direct 180 degree impact on his feelings towards gay marriage policy, I'm thinking that's an area deserving of criticism, not praise...

(Here's a New Republic article in a similar vein...registration required)