Last December, when the news hit that Mary Cheney and Heather Poe were having a baby, assorted conservative leaders turned the couple into a piñata.

Now the baby’s grandfather, Vice President Cheney, has announced that Mary is having a boy.

Let the games begin.

Based on their initial reaction, I can only assume social conservatives will now treat the country to another round of scolding. It could be they got it out of their systems last December, but I doubt it. I suspect the news that the two lesbians are birthing a boy will unleash pinpoint-focused conniptions.

Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, who initially called Cheney’s pregnancy “unconscionable,” will disappoint me if she doesn’t have something just as provocative to say about the latest news.

Like this, for instance: “A boy? With no father? That’s not unconscionable, that’s criminal. With all due respect to the vice president, his daughter belongs in the pokey.”

Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute at the Media Research Center, said in December, “I think it’s tragic that a child has been conceived with the express purpose of denying it a father.”

I hope, four months later, Knight can top this astounding analysis of what motivates lesbians to have children – but it won’t be easy.

Perhaps something along these lines: “I believe this is precisely what those women hoped for, the opportunity to ruin a boy. I know lesbians loathe men, but I never thought they’d stoop this low. Imagine the poor tyke in that household, yearning for a male role model, and the closest thing he can find is two women who played college ice hockey.

“Without a father, this boy won’t receive proper guidance on how to be male. He’ll absorb only female tendencies. I hope the vice president is prepared for another homosexual in the Cheney family.”

Then there’s James Dobson, influential leader of the evangelical Focus on the Family, who in December wrote a guest column for Time magazine headlined “Two Mommies is One Too Many.” He didn’t strafe the moms-to-be, noting that his group “does not desire to harm or insult women such as Cheney and Poe. Rather, our conviction is that birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples.”

In making his case for so-called traditional marriage, Dobson turned less to God and more to social science, citing the work of two child-rearing experts. God would’ve been a safer choice because both of those experts wrote to Dobson and Time that Dobson had turned their research into a game of Twister.

In his letter, Dr. Kyle Pruett from the Yale School of Medicine stated that Dobson “cherry-picked a phrase” from Pruett’s book to buttress his discriminatory aim, and conveniently ignored Pruett’s contention that kids of gay dads develop just fine.

Well, if Dobson likes to pick and choose his facts, I can make a reasonable guess as to his next penned offering:

“The news that Mary Cheney will deliver a boy concerns us here at Focus on the Family. While we are certain Cheney and her lesbian partner will be the best parents they can, we are also certain that this boy would be much better served by having one mother and one father, who are married to each other.

“Not only is this traditional arrangement biblically mandated, but its importance is evident in professor Charles Zucker’s study of the crickets of southern Kansas. Zucker discovered that those male crickets raised by a single mother or by two mothers never expressed any interest in going out for football.

“It will be best for the children, and best for society, when adult crickets finally put their selfish ways behind them.”