What constitutes an insult?

I've generally tried to stay out of the pseudo-furor over Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney in the last debate, since I think it was basically a well-deployed Rove distraction strategy to take the public eye off of Bush's more substantive gaffs (the lie about dismissing Osama, the "I hope it's not the Administration's fault, heh heh" joke). But the fact of the matter is that the level of professed outrage demonstrates only that "gay" is viewed as an insult, precisely (and only) by those claiming to protect Ms. Cheney. If Kerry had referred to the Bush twins as college students (as factual as that Mary is a lesbian, has been out, and has worked as a gay advocate in the corporate sector), would that have been a matter for all the finger wagging? Please. Anyway, I decided to acknowledge all of this because Andrew Sullivan, conservative megaphone, summarized the point quite nicely thus:

Alan Keyes goes on the attack again, saying children of gay parents will live in families where "incest becomes inevitable." I await the outrage of Matthew Dowd, Lynne Cheney, Bill Kristol, Bill Safire, Mort Kondracke, Maureen Dowd, and on and on. Oh, wait. It's only if you say a positive thing about gay people that you're a homophobe.

Quite so. On to reality-based news!
(link via Matthew Yglesias)