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About her relationship with Heather Poe, she said, "What you have to understand is that as far as I'm concerned, Heather and I are married. We've built a home and a life together. She is the person I hope to spend the rest of my life with. We're just waiting for the state and federal laws to catch up with us." If the man she worked so hard to see elected is successful in passing the Federal Marriage Act, it's going to be a long wait.
Whatever charity Cheney has in her heart for Bush, for John Edwards, the man who did nothing more than mention that Cheney had a lesbian daughter during the debate, and his running mate John Kerry, Mary Cheney has vitriol to spare. She admitted she mouthed “Go fuck yourself” to Edwards during the debate, and wrote, "I was furious. It was a blatant and sleazy political ploy."
On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Cheney why she thought Edwards and Kerry raised this issue, and she replied, “I've heard different theories about why they would have done it. I think probably the one that's most believable is that they wanted to make sure that everybody who might have a problem with it knew that Dick Cheney had a gay daughter.” Did the thought they might have been doing it to point out the hypocrisy of Dick Cheney never cross her mind?
Although most interviewers haven't done much to challenge Cheney on her own hypocrisy, Wallace gave it a shot, asking her, “Senate Republicans, with the support, perhaps at the urging of Karl Rove, plan to introduce an amendment next month once again, a constitutional amendment, to ban same sex marriage, at least in part, it is said, to mobilize their conservative base. You talked about what the Democrats did as cheap. In the book you talk about sleazy, slimy politics. Is what the Republicans are engaged in sleazy and slimy politics?”
Although Cheney reiterated her opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment in response, she didn't answer Wallace's question and he, following the footsteps of other interviewers, didn't push it.
But if he had, he might have asked why she is she so incredibly angry at John Edwards, who, whatever his motivation, simply stated his admiration of her parents' acceptance of having a lesbian daughter, and so forgiving toward Karl Rove for using homophobia as a tool to drive up voter turnout among evangelicals in order to get more votes for Bush.
Who hurt her more? Did Edwards hurt her at all? And if he did, how do you get angrier at “sleazy” than you get at “evil”?
In writing Now It's My Turn, Cheney may have been looking to polish her father's image in the gay community, and her own as well, to make herself look a bit less like a collaborator. She has a history of that. As lesbian blogger Pam Spaulding pointed out, Cheney once worked for Coors to help rehabilitate its image with the lesbian and gay market. She was willing to use her sexual orientation as a tool in that PR campaign, too, making doubly hypocritical her outrage at Edwards and Kerry for bringing it up in the presidential campaign.
Whatever her motivation, it's not likely this book will do much to make Mary Cheney a beloved figure in the gay and lesbian community. While a recent poll at Big Gay Picture found that some people have a certain amount of sympathy for her as the daughter of a powerful conservative politician, 77 percent of respondents felt “she deserves every negative word said about her,” or simply doesn't care what she has to say.
There's a big difference between being a loyal daughter in a difficult position, and actively working for the Republican Party while it seeks to enshrine discrimination against you in the Constitution.
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