All day long I've been thinking Alan Keyes calling Dick Cheney's daughter a "selfish hedonist" on the radio the other night. For the life of me, I cannot think of why he said that. Context is all important. You go to New York for the Republican Convention, you're already a massive underdog, many of the state party leaders don't like you, and you are trying to defeat a rising Democratic star. So you go on a gay and lesbian radio station (why?), you denounce homosexual marriage as "selfish hedonism" because it intentionally separates marriage from procreation (a true point but not one calculated to win over the uncommitted), and then you apply the label to Vice-President Cheney's lesbian daughter.
Let me see if I've got this straight. You attack the daughter of the man who is running on your own party's national ticket. If by some miracle, you are elected, and there is a tie vote in the Senate, the man whose daughter you insulted will cast the deciding vote. If anything happens to the president, that same man becomes the most powerful man in the world. And you just insulted his daughter?
So maybe you say, "It wasn't an insult. It's the truth." Fine, but do you think anyone will accept that explanation? If it were my daughter, I wouldn't accept that explanation.
I write this because I genuinely like Alan Keyes and agree with so many things that he says. Last Sunday--last Sunday!--he preached this powerful sermon at Mountaintop Community Church in Birmingham, Alabama. I agree with virtually everything he said. The next night--on a gay and lesbian radio station!--he attacks Dick Cheney's daughter.
I agree that homosexuality is a sin. Readers of this weblog know that I've been calling for boldness in speaking the truth. But not like this. No, not like this. It's not enough to say, "Well, I told the truth." Context matters. The time and place and the setting all matter. And how you say it matters. "A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver" (Proverbs 25:11). This was not an "aptly spoken" word.
It was dumb, dumb, dumb. I can't think of anything else to say about it.
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