FOX News Channel FOX & Friends co-host E.D. Hill took Senator John Kerry to task for his response to criticism over his reference to Mary Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter, as a lesbian during the October 13 presidential debate. Hill compared his explanation -- that he had been trying to “say something positive about the way strong families deal with the issue” -- to telling “an alcoholic's family ... that kid of yours sure is a wino, but you know, you're really dealing with it well and I'm sure that he has no choice about being a wino.”

Here's what Kerry said during the October 13 presidential debate in response to moderator Bob Schieffer's question, “Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?”:

KERRY: We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.

Kerry responded to criticism of his remark in an October 14 statement: “I love my daughters. They love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with the issue.”

Here's what Hill said on the October 15 edition of FOX & Friends:

HILL: You know what? That's like if you talk to an alcoholic's family and you say, boy, that kid of yours sure is a wino, but you know, you're really dealing with it well and I'm sure that he has no choice about being a wino. I mean really that's what it is. I'm sorry. Senator Kerry, there's nothing you can say here. It is what it is.

On his website on October 15, conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan addressed the tendency among some to equate “gayness with some sort of embarrassing problem or, worse, some kind of affliction”:

Notice two things. First, the equation of gayness with some sort of embarrassing problem or, worse, some kind of affliction. For people who believe this, of course Kerry was out of line. That's why [Bush campaign senior adviser Karl] Rove's base is so outraged. But if you don't believe this, it's no different than, say, if a candidate were to mention another candidate's son in the Marines. Or if, in a debate on immigration, a pro-immigrant candidate mentioned Kerry's immigrant wife. You have to regard homosexuality as immoral or wrong or shameful to even get to the beginning of the case against Kerry. That's why it's a Rorschach test.