God It's So Depressing

I really can't believe this hardball transcript. Just make it all go away...

MATTHEWS: Now for our “Decision 2000 Political Update.” This weekend, Senator John Edwards addresses the human rights campaign, the nation’s largest gay and lesbian organization.
On our HARDBALL college tour, Edwards opposed gay marriage but endorsed partnership rights regarding health care and other benefits for same-sex civil unions. On a more personal note here’s Congressman Dick Gerhardt, another presidential hopeful, discussing his own 30-year-old daughter.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Chrissy (ph) is a lesbian. She is a great young woman. She is doing great work. She’s a social worker here in D.C. And I’m very proud of her. And I want her help in the campaign. And she’s going to help with gay and lesbian people, but she’s going to help with people all over the country.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: It’s interesting that Vice President Cheney’s daughter is also a lesbian. Interesting. Things are developing in this country for better or worse, but we are coming public with these things. Finally here’s some muscular in-your-face politics from President Bush. Today he addressed graduating class at the University of South Carolina. Not Notre Dame or Stanford, but South Carolina, the site of his bitter year-2000 primary smack down of Senator John McCain.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: Let’s go to the panel. We didn’t get to see much of him there. Terry, what do you think of these new developments?
JEFFREY: Well, in terms of Senator Edwards and his position coming forward in terms of the gay rights thing, Chris, this goes right back into the last discussion. The fact of the matter is if you adopt and advocate tradition views that we ought to only have sex in marriage, which was the view that Senator Santorum was expressing a few weeks ago, and you relate this to people who want to engage in homosexual behavior, or even promiscuous homosexual behavior, then the cultural lead in this country will to try and destroy you. The fact of the matter is, if in this country you try and teach your children the traditional moral norms in sexuality, the cultural elite in this country from the public schools to the people who run the newspapers...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Was it right or wrong for Dick Gerhardt to come public about his daughter’s orientation? Is it right or wrong for Dick Cheney to do the same a while back?
JEFFREY: I think its wrong for any leader in American life to try normalize morally...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: No, is it right or wrong to be open about it?
JEFFREY: I think it’s very odd. I think it’s odd for a politician to try make a political gain out of talking about his daughter’s sex life. Why is he going on national TV?
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Maybe because a newspaper organization is about to blow...
JEFFREY: Why do we need to know about his daughter’s sex life?
MATTHEWS: ... the story.
JEFFREY: That’s another horrible thing. Why should they want to blow the story?
MATTHEWS: Because he has got to deal with it. Does anybody ever thought about these lines? I will let everybody off the hook on this one. Go ahead, Carl.
JEFFERS: The only thing I would suggest about what Terry just said is I would wonder if Terry also felt that it was inappropriate for Dick Cheney, and whether he was looking at it for a political gain because I don’t think he was. And I don’t agree with Dick Cheney and have a great deal of problem with much of Dick Cheney’s position, but that I believe that Cheney and Gerhardt, all of these men and women, when it comes to them, are being sincere. They’re dealing with an individual family situation and they are trying to make it an easier situation, I think, for the country to understand that diversity is important and we have to accept these things, and that is that’s no excuse, by the way, for allowing kids to be able to do what they did in New York and that.
JEFFREY: This is the truth. No one has the right to tell your kid or my kid that it’s OK to have sex outside of marriage or that homosexual sex is morally acceptable.
MATTHEWS: Nobody is saying that.
JEFFREY: Yes, they are.
JEFFERS: Nobody is saying that, Terry.
JEFFREY: They’re in the supreme court right now, the Lawrence v. Texas case, arguing that it is quote-unquote a fundamental right to engage in any kind of consensual sex.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Who wants to talk? Go ahead. Go ahead, Ken.
JOWITT: Well, first of all, being a devout heterosexual, I think it’s perfectly legitimate for gays and lesbians to organize as interest groups like any other citizen, to assure they’re not discriminated. I mean, my father had to hide the fact that he was a democrat working for a republican in a factory, for god’s sake. Some people had to hide the fact that they had mixed marriages. I don’t have to be a partisan of any particular style of life. What I object to is promiscuity in every type of life. It’s perfectly legitimate for Gerhardt to say his daughter is a lesbian and lesbians vote. I mean, not to acknowledge this is to put your hand-your head in the sand. And it is not the condoned promiscuous behavior on anyone’s part.
MCGUIRK: I think it’s ironic that you have two guys with the first with the first names that they have with the lesbian daughters. I don’t think there is some sort of pattern there, but...
MATTHEWS: Well, OK. No. Coming up, more shots at President Bush and his victory visit on the USS Abraham Lincoln from the Democrats. They keep hitting him for his best day on earth. There is President Bush aboard the ship. We will be back to talk about why the Democrats keep bringing the issue up again.