Congratulations to Mary Cheney, daughter of the vice-president, and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe.  It turns out that Mary is pregnant.

I don’t understand how one of two women (who aren’t married to each other because women can’t marry women) can manage to get pregnant, so I went to the world’s most reliable source about, well, everything — Agapepress.org, the Christian News Service.  Regrettably, they haven’t reported on the event, or told me what to think about it yet.

UPDATE:  Obviously, I wrote the above with my tongue firmly implanted in my cheek.  But some Christian conservatives are asking the same questions.  Enter Townhall columnist and radio talk show host Kevin McCullough:

According to Fox News Mary Cheney, the 37 year old daughter of Vice President Cheney is pregnant. She and the woman she lives with and engages in sexual behavior with – Heather Poe – are ecstatic at the news.

This development prompted some important questions…

1. How did the exclusive sexual union of these two women bring about this conception?

Well, obviously, Kevin, the "sexual union" involved a dude (although I doubted that he physically participated).  Duh.

2. What does it mean, from a biological nature to realize that a man WAS in fact necessary for this conception to take place?

It means nothing.  We’ve always known that for procreation to take place, male sperm is necessary.  This is not, and never has been, a point of controversy.

3. What does it mean to the supposed "intimacy" that "two people share" which was intended by the Creator to be a function that creates life, to be forced to include a third party?

Wow.  How loaded can a question get?

Well, it could "mean" any number of things, Kevin.  It could mean that your infallible Creator ain’t so infallible after all, seeing as how he made Mary Cheney and her partner who they are.  Or it could mean that the Creator didn’t intend intimacy JUST to be a procreational event.  Or perhaps it means that the Creator didn’t intend intimacy to necessarily include just two people.  Or perhaps it means that there is no Creator at all.

4. Doesn’t it make a rather strong statement that biologically speaking, the sexual union these two women share – is in fact, scientifically speaking – inadequate?

No.  Procreationally speaking, the sexual union of these two women is "inadequate", but not biologically speaking.  For whatever reason, these women (apparently) take physical pleasure in each other, triggering off biological activity within themselves, including the release of hormones and activity in the pleasure center of the brain.  So biologically — for them at least — their sexual union is "adequate".

5. Is it healthy for a society to celebrate inadequate sexual unions that lead to everything except what it was designed to be?

Well, I don’t think we should declare a national holiday, if that’s what you mean.

But certainly, couples (including hetero couples) engage in "sexual unions" when the female is well past child-bearing years.  This is both healthy and desireable.  The notion that sexual unions were designed ONLY for procreation is simply wrong — morally and biologically.

I hasten to add that if the Creator designed us to have sex only for the purposes of making babies, he would be opposed to marriages (and sexual unions) by heterosexual couples beyond their child-bearing years, as well as marriages/sexual unions to and by women who are infertile.  According to your way of thinking, Kevin, infertile women of any age or orientation should not be allowed to have sex — ever.  That’s pretty fucked up.

6. Knowing from scientific data that children excel best when given the full and natural parental structure of one mother and one father, is it moral to bring a child into such a scenario – purposefully, simply to stroke one’s own desire to have a child – sort of like a new handbag, or pair of shoes?

I don’t quite claim to know why Mary and her partner desired to have a child, but what is the basis that it is any different for them than it is for any heterosexual couple?  LOTS of straight couples (too many, if you ask me) have the desire to have a child "sort of like a new handbag, or pair of shoes".

I won’t go in to the so-called "scientific data", except to say that a conclusion that the one mother-one father structure is "best" is overly-simplistic.  The presence of two parents (or parental figures) is important, but there’s nothing suggesting that it has to be the biological mother and the biological father, nor necessarily a woman and a man.  Even still, the impact of that single factor is often overshadowed by other factors, like income levels and education of the parent(s).

Okay, I lied — here’s some scientific studies:

As of 1990, 6 million to 14 million children in the United States were living with a gay or lesbian parent. (National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, a service of the U.S. Administration for Children and Families.)

There is absolutely no evidence that children are psychologically or physically harmed in any way by having LGBT parents. There is, however, much evidence that shows that they are not.

People with LGBT parents have the same incidence of homosexuality as the general population, about 10%. No research has ever shown that LGBT parents have any affect on the sexuality of their children. (Patterson, Charlotte J. 1992)

Research claims that children with LGBT parents are exposed to more people of the opposite sex than many kids of straight parents. (Rofes, E.E., 1983, Herdt, 1989)

Studies have shown that people with LGBT parents are more open-minded about a wide variety of things than people with straight parents. (Harris and Turner, 1985/86)

Daughters of lesbians have higher self-esteem than daughters of straight women. Sons are more caring and less aggressive. (Hoeffer, 1981)

On measures of psychosocial well-being, school functioning, and romantic relationships and behaviors, teens with same-sex parents are as well adjusted as their peers with opposite-sex parents. A more important predictor of teens’ psychological and social adjustment is the quality of the relationships they have with their parents. (National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, 2004)

Most "problems" that kids of LGBT parents face actually stem from the challenges of dealing with divorce and the homophobia and transphobia in society rather then the sexual orientation or gender identity of their parents.