In early December 2006, Mary Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne, announced that she and her longtime lesbian partner are expecting a baby. Dick Cheney's spokeswoman Megan McGinn broke the news to reporters, adding, "The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of their sixth grandchild." Controversy quickly ensued. The great irony of the situation was not lost on the media or GLBT Americans. Dick Cheney, a poster child for the right-wing, is expecting a grandchild from his lesbian daughter and her partner, despite years of condemnation of all things gay: same-sex marriages, civil unions, equal employment rights, anti-discrimination laws, hate crime legislation, pride festivals, and child-rearing by same-sex couples.

Dick Cheney has refused to comment on his daughter's pregnancy, except a few assertions that it's a joyous, blessed, and welcome event. In late January, when CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Cheney what he though of conservatives who criticize his daughter's pregnancy, Cheney was outraged. Cheney told Blitzer that he was "over the line" with such a question. Mary Cheney concurred, later telling The New York Times, "He was trying to get a rise out of my father." That same day, Mary Cheney backpedaled a bit, apparently feeling the need to defend her same-sex household, even if her father felt no such need. Mary Cheney stated, "Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last twenty years on this issue has shown there is no difference between children who are raised by same-sex parents and children who are raised by opposite-sex parents. What matters is that children are being raised in a stable, loving environment." Still no definitive word from her powerful father on the rightness or wrongness of same-sex partners raising children.

In fact, Dick Cheney has remained politically ambiguous on the issue of gay rights, even if he is guilty by association. In August 2006, at a town hall meeting in Michigan, Cheney commented, "Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue that our family is very familiar with…. With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People…ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to." Doubtlessly in deference to his boss, Cheney stopped short of defining what kind of relationships same-sex couples should be able to enter into. Marriages? Civil unions? Common-law marriages? Don't ask, don't tell?

Cheney has reiterated time and again his belief that the same-sex marriage issue should be left up to the States, not the federal government. He conveniently ignores the multitude of problems such a solution brings about, including marriages unrecognized across State borders, couples who move frequently having to get married in every different state, and the myriad of lawsuits sure to spring up under such a silly policy, eventually forcing the issue up the American legal chain to the United State Supreme Court where the federal government would involve itself eventually.

Cheney's refusal to declare unequivocally that same-sex marriage is wrong and should be illegal has infuriated some religious conservatives. In August 2006, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, commented, "Unfortunately, protection of our values is made more difficult when mixed messages emanate from the White House. We support President Bush's commitment to a Constitutional amendment on marriage but we are left to wonder why the Vice President is allowed to depart from this position when the top of the ticket is unified on all other issues." Conservative religious zealots would hail the Vice President as a hero if the President were soft on banning same-sex marriage while the Vice President railed against it. In that case, they'd have no problem with a Vice President's failure to fully support the President's views.

Who suffers in this mess while the media and political party big-wigs jab it out over controversial GLBT issues? All of the American people suffer. Gay people suffer. Their parents and families suffer. Perhaps most significantly, the children of same-sex couples, not to mention thousands of children in need of a loving home, suffer. Despite Dick Cheney's failure to endorse gay marriage or GLBT rights, and despite his daughter's seemingly blind support of her father's political career and the Republican Party, the Cheney family has at least two things right in this debacle. First, they seem to stick together and support each other, despite circumstances and differences that would tear most families apart. Second, Mary Cheney has it right when she says that children raised by same-sex couples are just as healthy and happy as children raised by opposite-sex couples.

I just wish that Dick Cheney would let us know exactly how much he supports his lesbian daughter and her family. Time and again, when asked about the situation, Cheney cries foul and decries such "personal" questions. Wake up! It's the 21st century and the personal IS political, due in large part to conservative politicians' need to delve into every personal area of American lives. You cannot speak your mind freely about every political issue under the sun and then plead the Fifth when it's a hot-button issue that directly affects your family. In politics, you simply cannot have it both ways. I suspect that the Vice President is soft on GLBT issues because he knows one of us personally—his own daughter. He knows that most GLBT Americans are normal, hard-working, decent people, something that his boss and other conservatives cannot recognize because they demonize us and refuse to get to know us and our struggles on a personal level. Dick Cheney's failure to completely demonize GLBT people is a chink in the armor of conservative Republicans, and although it will probably have minimal results for us, I'm glad that this weakness has been brought to light.