By Bob Kemper
Washington Bureau Chicago Tribune
March 7, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Gay-rights activists, outraged at what they see as the Bush administration's decision to provoke a culture war over gay marriage, are directing much of their anger at Cheney.
Not Vice President Dick Cheney. Their target is his daughter Mary.
Ferociously loyal to her father and a senior official in the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, the largely low-profile and openly gay Mary Cheney has been catapulted into what promises to be the most visible, contentious cultural debate of the 2004 presidential campaign.
Her father, who earlier opposed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, has backed President Bush's recent call for such an amendment. Now Mary Cheney is under pressure from the gay community to break with her father, resign from the campaign position that pays her a six-figure salary and denounce the Republican ticket's treatment of gays.
"She is an out lesbian running the re-election campaign of this ticket that is politically the most anti-gay administration of our lives," said John Aravosis, co-founder of a Web site, DearMary.com, dedicated to lobbying Mary Cheney on the issue of gay marriage.
Since Feb. 24, when Bush announced his support for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, about 20,000 gay men and women have posted letters on DearMary.com cajoling, imploring and demanding that Cheney speak out against what they see as the administration's treatment of gays as second-class citizens.
"Mary, you are the hopes of millions of Americans just like yourself," wrote one correspondent, Gary of North Carolina. "Don't miss this chance to be a hero in the eyes of your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters fighting for justice."
Added Andrew, who said he was 16 years old, "People at different times throughout our history have a moment that can change everything. Will you let this moment pass you by?"
Activists plan to deliver letters from the Web site to Mary Cheney as part of a broader campaign against the proposed marriage amendment that includes organizing anti-amendment groups and running advertisements in politically crucial states.
Mary Cheney, through a campaign spokesman, declined to be interviewed. Dick Cheney's office did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Support for Bush
But the vice president, in an interview with CNN last week, said he is supportive of Bush, though he did not specifically say he had abandoned his view that states, not the federal government, should regulate gay marriage.
"I support the president," said Cheney, who generally voted against gay-rights measures when he served in Congress between 1979 and 1989. "My deal with the president is that I get to advise him on the issues of the day. . . . He sets the policy for the administration."
Four years ago, during the 2000 campaign, Dick Cheney said, "People should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to," adding, "I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area." But he has recently echoed Bush's assertion that the actions of Massachusetts judges and San Francisco officials facilitating gay marriage have changed the landscape.
Asked about Bush's call for a constitutional ban in light of Bush's relationship with the vice president and Mary Cheney, White House spokesman Scott McClellan answered in general terms.
"This is a sensitive debate, and it is important that people hold true to their beliefs without condemning anybody else," McClellan said. "Therefore, I call upon all sides in the debate to conduct themselves with dignity and honor and respect. But this is a debate that the nation must have."
Dick Cheney has made it clear he is unhappy that a public policy issue has become personal for his family. But activists targeting Mary Cheney see her as fair game not just because she is the vice president's daughter, but also because she was already a self-made public figure of sorts, someone they say has traded on her sexual orientation to sell beer for the Coors Brewing Co.
Before her father became vice president, Mary Cheney lived an openly gay lifestyle in Colorado with her life partner and worked as Coors' liaison with the gay community.
She traveled the country, trying to persuade owners of gay bars to sell Coors. It was not an easy sell, because Coors' ties to ultraconservative causes and its treatment of gay employees had led to a boycott by gay beer drinkers.
But by funneling Coors' money to gay-sponsored festivals and events and reassuring bar owners that the company's views on gays had changed, Mary Cheney by all accounts did well. Indeed, with her help, Coors lured gay drinkers so successfully that religious conservatives denounced the brewer, claiming the firm undermined traditional family values.
"Coors is such an easy target," Mary Cheney told the alternative weekly Denver Westword in 1999. "It's really tempting to put the [gay community's] Coors Boycott Committee and the far-right extremist groups in the same room and figure out which one of them gets to be mad at us."
Joined advisory board
After Bush's election, Mary Cheney joined the advisory board of the Republican Unity Coalition, a gay-straight group that urges tolerance inside the GOP despite a party platform critical of gay rights. At the time, she issued a statement that gay activists have cited in questioning how she can remain publicly silent on the marriage amendment.
"Working together, we can expand the Republican Party's outreach to non-traditional Republicans," she said in the statement. "We can make sexual orientation a non-issue for the Republican Party, and we can help achieve equality for all gay and lesbian Americans."
Aravosis of DearMary.com said: "She talked about making sexual orientation a non-issue, but now she's running her dad's campaign and making gay-bashing a top plank in their platform."
Conservative reaction to Mary Cheney's sexual orientation was summed up in a newsletter published by Rev. Jerry Falwell when Dick Cheney joined the GOP ticket in 2000. Falwell urged his followers to stand by the nominee despite his "one errant, but loved family member."
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a group supportive of the marriage amendment, said Mary Cheney isn't an issue in the current debate. What matters is whether her father and Bush demonstrate "sustained leadership" in passing the amendment, including speaking out on the issue, he said. So far, gay marriage has been absent from Bush and Cheney's stump speeches.
"We realize the personal side of this issue," Perkins said. "But we're not attacking individuals for their choices. What we want to focus on is public policy."
Gay activists joining the fight against the marriage amendment are divided over the fairness of going after Mary Cheney personally, and some sympathize with her, assuming she may have a complex relationship with her parents, which is hardly unheard of in the gay community.
"I do believe this is about the president's decision to amend the Constitution. Mary Cheney is not the president. She is just being supportive of her father," said Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, the largest gay-rights group affiliated with the GOP.
Another activist who has worked with Mary Cheney said, "It is fair to raise the question, because she is a prominent part of the campaign. But also people need to walk a mile in her shoes on this."
This is not the first time Mary Cheney's sexuality has propelled her into the limelight. At the Republican Party's 2000 nominating convention, all eyes turned to see whether she would join her father during his official nomination (she did) and whether her partner would appear in the family's box (she did not).
Mary Cheney's mother, conservative activist and author Lynne Cheney, provoked an uproar when she took exception to a comment by ABC's Cokie Roberts that Mary Cheney "has now declared she is openly gay."
"Mary has never declared such a thing," Lynne Cheney retorted during an interview. "And I'm surprised, Cokie, that even you would want to bring that up."
Mary Cheney had told a lesbian magazine, Girlfriends, a year earlier that the reason she went to work for Coors was "because I knew other lesbians who were very happy here."
By all accounts, she is close to her parents, and she regularly goes fishing and hunting with the vice president. Her father once described her in an interview with The New York Times as someone who "has no qualms about telling me when she thinks I'm wrong or when I need to do something."
But if Mary Cheney has exerted any influence on her father, or on Bush, it is not evident. Dick Cheney, while representing Wyoming in Congress, voted against classifying violence against gays as hate crimes and he opposed providing money for AIDS treatment and counseling.
Mary Cheney is not the first political offspring to be pulled against her will into a national debate, or to be used by outside groups to highlight the perceived hypocrisy of a father's politics, according to Doug Wead, author of "All the Presidents' Children."
Others in spotlight
President William Henry Harrison's son was unjustly pilloried for embezzlement by his father's political opponents, said Wead, who interviewed 19 presidential offspring for his book.
Nor is Mary Cheney the first gay son or daughter of a president or vice president. Millard Fillmore and John Adams had sons believed to be gay--although given the norms of 18th and 19th Century America, they certainly felt no pressure to lobby their fathers on behalf of gay rights.
If there is a lesson to be learned from the collective experiences of White House children, Wead said, it is that the best way for a child to ensure privacy and future stability is to stay away from the White House.
"I don't know what her obligation is as a public figure," Wead said of Mary Cheney. "But she is going to have less trauma in her life if she avoids the limelight."
Washington Bureau Chicago Tribune
March 7, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Gay-rights activists, outraged at what they see as the Bush administration's decision to provoke a culture war over gay marriage, are directing much of their anger at Cheney.
Not Vice President Dick Cheney. Their target is his daughter Mary.
Ferociously loyal to her father and a senior official in the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, the largely low-profile and openly gay Mary Cheney has been catapulted into what promises to be the most visible, contentious cultural debate of the 2004 presidential campaign.
Her father, who earlier opposed a constitutional ban on gay marriage, has backed President Bush's recent call for such an amendment. Now Mary Cheney is under pressure from the gay community to break with her father, resign from the campaign position that pays her a six-figure salary and denounce the Republican ticket's treatment of gays.
"She is an out lesbian running the re-election campaign of this ticket that is politically the most anti-gay administration of our lives," said John Aravosis, co-founder of a Web site, DearMary.com, dedicated to lobbying Mary Cheney on the issue of gay marriage.
Since Feb. 24, when Bush announced his support for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, about 20,000 gay men and women have posted letters on DearMary.com cajoling, imploring and demanding that Cheney speak out against what they see as the administration's treatment of gays as second-class citizens.
"Mary, you are the hopes of millions of Americans just like yourself," wrote one correspondent, Gary of North Carolina. "Don't miss this chance to be a hero in the eyes of your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters fighting for justice."
Added Andrew, who said he was 16 years old, "People at different times throughout our history have a moment that can change everything. Will you let this moment pass you by?"
Activists plan to deliver letters from the Web site to Mary Cheney as part of a broader campaign against the proposed marriage amendment that includes organizing anti-amendment groups and running advertisements in politically crucial states.
Mary Cheney, through a campaign spokesman, declined to be interviewed. Dick Cheney's office did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Support for Bush
But the vice president, in an interview with CNN last week, said he is supportive of Bush, though he did not specifically say he had abandoned his view that states, not the federal government, should regulate gay marriage.
"I support the president," said Cheney, who generally voted against gay-rights measures when he served in Congress between 1979 and 1989. "My deal with the president is that I get to advise him on the issues of the day. . . . He sets the policy for the administration."
Four years ago, during the 2000 campaign, Dick Cheney said, "People should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to," adding, "I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area." But he has recently echoed Bush's assertion that the actions of Massachusetts judges and San Francisco officials facilitating gay marriage have changed the landscape.
Asked about Bush's call for a constitutional ban in light of Bush's relationship with the vice president and Mary Cheney, White House spokesman Scott McClellan answered in general terms.
"This is a sensitive debate, and it is important that people hold true to their beliefs without condemning anybody else," McClellan said. "Therefore, I call upon all sides in the debate to conduct themselves with dignity and honor and respect. But this is a debate that the nation must have."
Dick Cheney has made it clear he is unhappy that a public policy issue has become personal for his family. But activists targeting Mary Cheney see her as fair game not just because she is the vice president's daughter, but also because she was already a self-made public figure of sorts, someone they say has traded on her sexual orientation to sell beer for the Coors Brewing Co.
Before her father became vice president, Mary Cheney lived an openly gay lifestyle in Colorado with her life partner and worked as Coors' liaison with the gay community.
She traveled the country, trying to persuade owners of gay bars to sell Coors. It was not an easy sell, because Coors' ties to ultraconservative causes and its treatment of gay employees had led to a boycott by gay beer drinkers.
But by funneling Coors' money to gay-sponsored festivals and events and reassuring bar owners that the company's views on gays had changed, Mary Cheney by all accounts did well. Indeed, with her help, Coors lured gay drinkers so successfully that religious conservatives denounced the brewer, claiming the firm undermined traditional family values.
"Coors is such an easy target," Mary Cheney told the alternative weekly Denver Westword in 1999. "It's really tempting to put the [gay community's] Coors Boycott Committee and the far-right extremist groups in the same room and figure out which one of them gets to be mad at us."
Joined advisory board
After Bush's election, Mary Cheney joined the advisory board of the Republican Unity Coalition, a gay-straight group that urges tolerance inside the GOP despite a party platform critical of gay rights. At the time, she issued a statement that gay activists have cited in questioning how she can remain publicly silent on the marriage amendment.
"Working together, we can expand the Republican Party's outreach to non-traditional Republicans," she said in the statement. "We can make sexual orientation a non-issue for the Republican Party, and we can help achieve equality for all gay and lesbian Americans."
Aravosis of DearMary.com said: "She talked about making sexual orientation a non-issue, but now she's running her dad's campaign and making gay-bashing a top plank in their platform."
Conservative reaction to Mary Cheney's sexual orientation was summed up in a newsletter published by Rev. Jerry Falwell when Dick Cheney joined the GOP ticket in 2000. Falwell urged his followers to stand by the nominee despite his "one errant, but loved family member."
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a group supportive of the marriage amendment, said Mary Cheney isn't an issue in the current debate. What matters is whether her father and Bush demonstrate "sustained leadership" in passing the amendment, including speaking out on the issue, he said. So far, gay marriage has been absent from Bush and Cheney's stump speeches.
"We realize the personal side of this issue," Perkins said. "But we're not attacking individuals for their choices. What we want to focus on is public policy."
Gay activists joining the fight against the marriage amendment are divided over the fairness of going after Mary Cheney personally, and some sympathize with her, assuming she may have a complex relationship with her parents, which is hardly unheard of in the gay community.
"I do believe this is about the president's decision to amend the Constitution. Mary Cheney is not the president. She is just being supportive of her father," said Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, the largest gay-rights group affiliated with the GOP.
Another activist who has worked with Mary Cheney said, "It is fair to raise the question, because she is a prominent part of the campaign. But also people need to walk a mile in her shoes on this."
This is not the first time Mary Cheney's sexuality has propelled her into the limelight. At the Republican Party's 2000 nominating convention, all eyes turned to see whether she would join her father during his official nomination (she did) and whether her partner would appear in the family's box (she did not).
Mary Cheney's mother, conservative activist and author Lynne Cheney, provoked an uproar when she took exception to a comment by ABC's Cokie Roberts that Mary Cheney "has now declared she is openly gay."
"Mary has never declared such a thing," Lynne Cheney retorted during an interview. "And I'm surprised, Cokie, that even you would want to bring that up."
Mary Cheney had told a lesbian magazine, Girlfriends, a year earlier that the reason she went to work for Coors was "because I knew other lesbians who were very happy here."
By all accounts, she is close to her parents, and she regularly goes fishing and hunting with the vice president. Her father once described her in an interview with The New York Times as someone who "has no qualms about telling me when she thinks I'm wrong or when I need to do something."
But if Mary Cheney has exerted any influence on her father, or on Bush, it is not evident. Dick Cheney, while representing Wyoming in Congress, voted against classifying violence against gays as hate crimes and he opposed providing money for AIDS treatment and counseling.
Mary Cheney is not the first political offspring to be pulled against her will into a national debate, or to be used by outside groups to highlight the perceived hypocrisy of a father's politics, according to Doug Wead, author of "All the Presidents' Children."
Others in spotlight
President William Henry Harrison's son was unjustly pilloried for embezzlement by his father's political opponents, said Wead, who interviewed 19 presidential offspring for his book.
Nor is Mary Cheney the first gay son or daughter of a president or vice president. Millard Fillmore and John Adams had sons believed to be gay--although given the norms of 18th and 19th Century America, they certainly felt no pressure to lobby their fathers on behalf of gay rights.
If there is a lesson to be learned from the collective experiences of White House children, Wead said, it is that the best way for a child to ensure privacy and future stability is to stay away from the White House.
"I don't know what her obligation is as a public figure," Wead said of Mary Cheney. "But she is going to have less trauma in her life if she avoids the limelight."
