Back on the 15th, the Mighty Reason Man wrote what now, retroactively, would be the last word on the Mary Cheney thing. I didn't read it until now because, well he doesn't update that often, hehe.

The MRM does away with the last Stupid Analogy that righties offered up which might have applied:

It has been suggested that Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney is analogous to a Civil Rights-era politician trying to gain favor among racist constituents by pointing out an opponent's friendliness with a black person.

This is backwards.

The appropriate analogy would be for a politican supporting Civil Rights to point out that Strom Thurmond had a black daughter - thereby partially neutralizing Strom's own appeals to virulent racists.

The righties offering up their analogies fail to point out, or understand?, that the genesis of this chapter of the debate was George W Bush pandering to homophobes, or as MRM puts it, "Idiot Queer Haters", through the FMA.