There’s something about Mary

As the lesbian daughter of the US Vice-President, Mary Cheney has found her sexuality the focus of unwanted political debate over the years. But all that was just a warm-up for the outrage that erupted from some quarters when it was announced back in December that she and her longtime partner were having a baby together.

Now, after noisy claims from conservatives that bringing up children should be the exclusive preserve of heterosexual couples, Cheney, 37, has responded with the sort of cool forcefulness for which her father is famous. Observing wryly that “when Heather and I decided to have a baby, it was not going to be the most popular decision ever”, she pointed to her belly and, publicly defending her decision to become pregnant for the first time, told a college audience: “This is a baby. This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement.”

Her words came after Dick Cheney accused a television interviewer of being “over the line” when he was asked about conservative criticism of his daughter’s pregnancy. She rubbished claims that research showed that children do best when brought up by a mother and father. “What matters is that children are being raised in a stable, loving environment,” she said. Brought up in Virginia, she went to college in Colorado and settled there after graduation. She worked in promotions for the Colorado Rockies baseball team and was then a lesbian and gay outreach co-ordin-ator for the Coors Brewing Co. She and Heather Poe have been together for 15 years.

She came to national attention in 2004 when she ran her father’s campaign office in the race for reelection. President Bush supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Dick Cheney, who, personally, did not support the amendment, was in an awkward position, but when John Kerry, the Democratic contender, clumsily dragged Mary’s name into the debate about homosexuality the Cheneys were furious.

Cheney later said that she came “pretty close” to quitting the campaign over gay marriage but decided to stay because she found the prospect of President Kerry “terrifying”. She said that it was because Heather was uncomfortable in the public eye that the couple did not join the rest of the family on stage after Mr Cheney’s speech at the Republican convention in 2004.

She wrote a book about her experiences, Now It’s My Turn: A Daughter’s Chronicle of Political Life . She said that she wanted to correct the caricature of her father as “the Darth Vader behind the Bush presidency. I can honestly vouch for the fact that it’s not true. And I really wanted to present an accurate portrayal of my Dad so that the rest of the world know the man that I love so much.” She is now a vice-president herself — at the internet giant AOL.

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