Cheney’s daughter speaks out

Great Falls, Va.

Mary Cheney, the avowedly lesbian daughter of the vice president, said she nearly quit the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2004 after George Bush called for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. “I had to decide if I could work for the election of a man who wanted to write discrimination into the Constitution,” said Cheney, whose memoir is out this week. She stuck it out, she said, because her father did not back the measure, and because after 9/11, “I don’t have the luxury of being a single-issue voter.” As for her own marital status, Cheney says she considers herself married to her longtime partner. “The laws just haven’t caught up with us yet.”