And Now It's Her Turn
Like her father the vice president, Mary Cheney is usually a model of self-control. But one moment in the 2004 campaign made her blood boil. It was when Democrat John Edwards, during a vice presidential debate, referred to her sexual preference in what she considered a crass and condescending way. "John Edwards took sleazy politics to a whole new level," Mary Cheney writes in her new book, Now It's My Turn: A Daughter's Chronicle of Political Life. (Threshold Editions) "... As Edwards went on to congratulate my family on the way they 'embraced' me, I got angrier and angrier. What in the world gave John Edwards any right to comment on my family? What gave him the right to use my sexual orientation to try to score political points?" Ms. Cheney's reaction as she sat in the audience was to mouth a four-letter expletive. The episode provided a rare insight into the close-knit bonds in the Cheney family. In her book and in a U.S. News interview, Mary Cheney spoke openly about her loving relationship with her longtime partner, Heather Poe, and how her conservative parents have always fully supported her since she first informed them at age 16 that she was a lesbian. Her father, she recounts, reacted with typical directness. "You're my daughter and I love you and I just want you to be happy," he said, to her great relief. But things haven't always gone so smoothly in her political life.
How did you react to President Bush's support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage?
I came very close to quitting [as director of vice presidential operations in the 2004 campaign]. The president gave his State of the Union speech Jan. 20, 2004. He said we had to protect 'the sanctity of marriage.'... He didn't exactly endorse the Federal Marriage Amendment--he did it a month later. But after the State of the Union, I knew it was coming ... and I really had to decide if I could work for the election of a man who wanted to write discrimination into the Constitution.
Why did you stay?
I love my dad. I think he is a great man and a great candidate, so I wanted to continue helping him. I also knew that he and the rest of my family didn't support the Federal Marriage Amendment, and they didn't want me to be forced from the campaign on an issue that none of us agreed with the administration on. Also, I'd made a commitment. I hadn't known that George Bush was going to do this, but it didn't change the fact that I had still made a commitment to see the campaign through. And there also was the fact that even though I passionately disagreed with the president on this issue, we live in a time when I don't have the luxury of being a single-issue voter on the issue of same-sex marriage. We live in a time when terrorists [seek to] hurt this country and her people and her interests, and in such a time you need a leader who is strong and determined and who will do what is right and who will do it in the best interests of this country. George Bush and Dick Cheney were those men.
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