Mary Cheney
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Mary Claire Cheney (born March 14, 1969) is the second daughter of Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States, and his wife, Lynne Cheney.
Family, education and career
Cheney graduated in 1991 from Colorado College (also the alma mater of her mother) in Colorado Springs, Colorado and earned a graduate business degree from the University of Denver in 2002. In 1993, she became one of the first employees of the Colorado Rockies baseball team, working in promotions when the team began playing in Denver. Thereafter she was a public relations manager for the Coors Brewing Company and worked as a gay and lesbian outreach coordinator, helping to end a national gay boycott of Coors. Cheney and her partner Heather Roan Poe currently live in Great Falls, Virginia; the couple previously lived in Conifer, Colorado. According to a May 7, 2006, story in USA Today, the two met in 1988 while playing ice hockey and have been together since their first date in 1992.
Mary Cheney was one of her father's top campaign aides and closest confidantes. In July 2003 she became the director of vice presidential operations for the Bush-Cheney 2004 Presidential re-election campaign.
Mary Cheney's sister Elizabeth is a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.
Attention to Cheney's sexuality
Mary Cheney's sexual orientation as a lesbian has become a source of increasing public attention because of her political involvement with the Republican Party and because of the burgeoning same-sex marriage debate.In 2000, the Bush-Cheney campaign freely discussed Elizabeth Cheney's marriage and children, but treated Mary Cheney's private life as off-limits. [link]. Nevertheless, because her lesbianism was publicly known, it was seen as bolstering the image of the Republican ticket as "compassionate conservatives" [link]. Still, there were mixed signals regarding Mary. During an interview with Lynne Cheney, Cokie Roberts brought up the topic of Mary's having declared herself a lesbian. "She has declared no such thing," Lynne Cheney responded, going on to scold Roberts for breaching journalistic etiquette[link]. The exchange made big headlines and caused much head-scratching as to whether Lynne Cheney had a problem with her daughter's sexuality, or didn't know about it.
In January 2001, Cheney and Poe were both seen in attendance at the inauguration of President Bush and her father. However, during the campaign she and her family seemed to all but deny Cheney's sexual orientation.
In 2002, she joined the gay-friendly Republican Unity Coalition and said that sexual orientation should be "a non-issue for the Republican Party", with a goal of "equality for all gay and lesbian Americans." Some LGBT Americans saw the organization as little more than election year window dressing to appeal to "moderate swing voters" and they point out the fact that the organization soon vanished after the 2004 election, and that Mary resigned from the RUC's board and in July 2003 became the director of vice presidential operations for the Bush-Cheney 2004 Presidential re-election campaign.
In 2004, public attention refocused on Mary's sexuality when the Bush administration supported the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would limit marriage to heterosexual couples and also ban civil unions and domestic partnership benefits. Mary Cheney has never publicly expressed her opinion of the amendment. Vice President Cheney, when asked during a campaign appearance about same-sex marriage, reiterated the position he took in the 2000 campaign, that the issue should be handled by the states. He added, though, that President Bush determined his administration's policies and his policy supported the Federal Marriage Amendment. [link]
In September of 2004, Illinois senate candidate Alan Keyes was criticized for contending that Mary Cheney was a "a selfish hedonist". When he made this statement about homosexuals in general and was asked if this made Mary one, Keyes replied "Of course she is. That goes by definition". Keyes later clarified his statement by noting that if his own daughter were engaged in such a life-style, he would still love her, but would tell her that she was in sin. Alan Keyes's daughter, Maya Keyes, has since come out as being a gay woman.
2004 re-election campaign
The subject of Mary Cheney's sexuality arose again during the 2004 presidential election debates. In February, 2004, gay activist and blogger John Aravosis launched a public campaign to generate letters and postcards to Mary, [DearMary.com], which generated significant media attention (including coverage in the [Washington Post] and [Newsweek]), and was at one point the top Google result for her name, it is now the third. "Dear Mary" also urged Mary to speak out against what the organization called the Bush campaign's "blatant gay-baiting", including the mass mailing by the Republican National Committee of [a flier] charging that "Liberal politicians" wanted to ban the Bible while allowing same-sex marriages.Both presidential candidate John Kerry and vice presidential candidate John Edwards mentioned her lesbianism when questioned regarding homosexuality issues. Edwards discussed Mary Cheney after moderator Gwen Ifill asked a question to the Vice President in which his daughter was indirectly mentioned:
"I want to read something you said four years ago at this very setting: 'Freedom means freedom for everybody.' You said it again recently when you were asked about legalizing same-sex unions. And you used your family's experience as a context for your remarks. Can you describe then your administration's support for a constitutional ban on same-sex unions?"[link]Upon Edwards' response to the question, which referred back to the Vice President's daughter, Mary Cheney claims that she mouthed the phrase "go fuck yourself" to Edwards from her seat in the audience. [link] At the end of the debate, Mary appeared on the podium with her partner and the rest of the family. During the third and final presidential debate, the debate moderator asked, "Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?" John Kerry replied, "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." This prompted an angry response from both Lynne and Dick Cheney. "You saw a man who will say and do anything to get elected," Vice President Cheney said at a campaign appearance in Florida the day after the debate. Some gays and lesbians claim there is an inherent hypocrisy of the Vice President and his wife's criticism and what gay activists see as the their willingness to exploit their daughter's sexuality when it proves beneficial to her father's campaign. John Edwards's wife Elizabeth Edwards speculated that the Cheneys were "ashamed" of their daughter. Some reports have suggested that Mary might have organized the official campaign response from her father's campaign in order control the message to the benefit of her father [link].
Mary Cheney and her domestic partner were in attendance at the 2004 National Republican Party convention, but were not seen onstage with the Cheney family after her father won the nomination.
Mary Cheney herself has been criticized by gay rights interest groups and sparked plenty of debate at LGBT online message board and chat rooms. Most LGBT Americans accuse her of engaging in hypocrisy when she agreed to accept a well paid position as the head of her father's 2004 reelection campaign.
2006 interview
Mary Cheney entirely vanished from the public spotlight after the 2004 election, until May 4th 2006 when she gave an interview with Diane Sawyer for ABC News "Primetime" program [link]. Cheney did the interview to garnish publicity for her new autobiography titled Now It's My Turn. She discusses how she came out to her parents, noting her father's initial reaction: "You know, look, you're my daughter and I love you and I just want you to be happy." She also discusses her 14-year relationship with Poe, but she remains noticeably ambivalent about her relationship with the Republican Party.Gay rights advocates criticized her for waiting until after the 2004 election to voice her disapproval of George W. Bush's positions on gay rights. They suggested that she should have spoken up when it would have made a difference, and that she therefore must not have had the best of intentions in writing this book.
During a May 19, 2006 appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, Letterman addressed some of the issues raised by the gay community. He criticized Cheney for waiting two years after the 2004 election to speak publicly about gay marriage and rights.
Bibliography
External links
- [Dear Mary] Critical website on Mary Cheney's political stance on GLBT issues
- [Republican Unity Coalition]
- ["Hiding in Plain Sight"] - from The Advocate, September 12, 2000
- [Mary Cheney's 2004 political involvement] - from USA Today, October 15, 2004
- ["What Everybody Doesn't Know About Mary Cheney"] - from the Washington Post, October 19, 2004
- [Keyes: Cheney's gay daughter practicing ‘selfish hedonism’] - from MSNBC, September 2, 2004
- [Mary Cheney calls gay marriage ban "wrong"] - May 14, 2006
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