While activists criticize the Vice President’s lesbian daugther Mary for not publicly lobbying for gay rights, this “woman who once preferred to fly under the radar” has probably done more than any of them to promote social acceptance of gay people in American civil society. While they work to change laws — or attack Republicans — Mary has lived her life quietly, but openly, in full view of her father’s conservative associates and political allies.
By not drawing attention to her sexuality, but attending public events, including the president’s victory speech after the 2004 election and his inauguration, together with her partner Heather Poe, she shows how normal their relationship is. Instead of seeing an angry activist criticizing their actions, conservatives see a gracious and intelligent woman devoted to that same-sex life partner. As they see this woman embrace her family, they began to understand that same-sex couples do not threaten family values.
If you don’t believe that such experiences change people’s attitudes, then look at this fact. The Vice President has, almost never*, disagreed with President Bush publicly over important policy matters. Yet, both he and his wife have made clear, on more than one occasion, that they disagree with the president on a constitutional amendment defining marriage.
If HRC’s Joe Solmonese really wants to defeat this pernicious proposal, instead of trying to score points with the political left, he would reference the Vice President’s opposition in every public statement he makes on the current debate.
Conservatives love the Vice President. Today, on the Al Rantel Show, über-conservative Ann Coulter said she liked the idea of a President Cheney. If his goal is to defeat the amendment, what better way to sway its conservative supporters than to remind them of this respected conservative’s opposition.
It is because this man so deeply loves his daughter that he understands how damaging the amendment could be. It is unfortunate that so many on the left have been using the publicity surrounding the release of Mary Cheney’s book to fault the Vice President’s daughter for missed opportunities and “cowardice.” But, as they rant on and on, suggesting that she somehow failed the community because she was silent when the House and Senate voted in 2004 on a constitutional amendment, they should note that the amendment failed to clear either House — when it needs a two-thirds majority in both to be sent to the states.
She didn’t need to come out publicly to stop the most unfortunate piece of legislation on gay issues in the president’s first term.
Perhaps some of the Republicans who opposed the bill were swayed by the Vice President’s oppostion — or their contact with his daughter.
Whiile I would like to think that her public opposition to state referenda (on laws defining marriage) would have dampened enthusiam for them, even in the bluest states, such initiatives passed by comfortable margins. I doubt her coming out would have changed the results in any of those states.
Some gay activists, however, do get the significance of her coming out. In an Op-Ed in the Washington Post (despite some anti-Republican boilerplate) Elizabeth Birch, a predecessor of Solomonese at HRC, and her partner Hilary Rosen write, “Mary’s presence on the national stage — the daughter of the vice president of the United States discussing issues related to our lives — is most welcome and has the potential to be a transforming moment for all Americans.” In a release last week, Log Cabin applauded her for “sharing her personal story” with the nation.
Indeed, it by sharing her personal story that Mary will do the most to help her fellow lesbian and gay Americans. As Robbie noted, in her Primetime Live interview with Diane Sawyer, Vice President’s daughter came across as “poised and likeable.” With such a face to define our community, many social conservatives are likely to start rethinking their attitudes towards gay people.
I disagree with many gay activists that the way to promote social acceptance and “basic fairness” for gay people is through legislative action and court decision. I believe that while we need to repeal a few laws (e.g,. Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell) and enact others recognizing same-sex unions, we don’t need much legislation to make it easier for gay and lesbian citizens in American civil society. Things are improving for gay and lesbian Americans across the nation — even in “red” states which lack non-discrimination legislation.
Things have changed because people like Mary have been living their lives openly as gay and lesbian citizens. And by the media showing the “ordinariness” of such lives. It’s one reason I left Washington to try to make it in Hollywood, hoping to do (what is now) increasingly being done — to promote positive portrayals of gay people in the popular media.
I believe that Mary has done more for gay people than most gay activists because they have focused too much on changing laws while she has changed minds. By living quietly as a gay woman without hiding her sexuality from her father’s conservative associates, individuals who might otherwise be unfavorably disposed to gay people, she has exposed them to the reality of what they have called “the homosexual lifestyle.”
And opening such minds is where the real battle lies.
-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com
*Indeed, I can’t find a single example of their public disagreement since then-Governor Bush tapped Cheney to be his running mate.
ADDENDUM. This post changed in the writing. So, I’ll have to do a few more posts to say some of the things I had wanted to say here. I’ve read about half of Mary’s book and am enjoying it very much. In subsequent pieces, I will write about the book and take issue with Birch and Rosen’s suggestion that Mary’s family has “perpetrated” wrongs “on the gay and lesbian community.” I will look at the Vice President’s relationship with his daughter, show what it says about the man. I will show how he has helped our community in ways most activists refuse to acknowledge, largely because of Cheney’s association with President Bush — and his conservative views.
You would be more convincing if you could point to something concrete Mary Cheney had done for gay people (other than selling us beer when she worked for Coors), and if your links for “many on the left” being all mean to her weren’t a couple of articles from the same virtually unknown Washington Blade writer.
I don’t doubt that Mary Cheney’s existence has changed a few minds of people close to her father. But that hardly makes her some kind of lesbian hero.
I wish her no ill will, and I expect nothing from her but for her to live her life. But saying she’s “done more” than the activists you denigrate – who have done things like secure antidiscrimination laws, defeated state-level antigay referendums, set up programs to help victims of gay bashing, lobbied for AIDS funding, etc. tells us more about your blind partisanship than it does about her.
Great post. Thanks! I have always felt that it has been hypocritical of Mary’s critics to claim that she is undermining gay rights when she is doing what they want their families to do – love them unconditionally!
#2 – Well Charles, they’re probably just jealous.
I hope that Mary Cheney effect might contribute to the defeat of the FMA when it comes up for a vote again, but I doubt she will have that much effect. One can hope though.
I hope that some of the gay organizations working to oppose state ballot initiatives will contact Mary Cheney to see if she would help with defeating these measures. I’ve always thought the Dear Mary milk carton campaign promoted by John Aravosis was vile.
The FMA is dead – but there’s really a need to focus on defeating some of these state ballot initiatives. I’d suggest that people do what they can to help in Wisconsin.
perhaps mary has changed the minds of some conservative friends of her parents and some conservatives she’s come in contact with during her life, but tell me, what exactly have those conservatives done with their changed minds?
it’s all well and good to change your mind quietly, but it won’t do us much good if these quiet conservatives, whose minds have been quietly changed by mary and heather’s quiet life, stay quiet about it. and frankly, i don’t think much of parents who would cooperate with an organization that has worked so tirelessly to diminish their own daughter’s dignity and quality of life.
Eva’s right on this one. The FMA is dead. There’s no way 67 Senators are going to vote for it. Let Senator Frist move the amendment — and let’s have a good debate, but let’s also focus on defeating that referendum in Wisconsin.
And Peter, by changing minds of social conservatives, that’s silencing potential anti-gay voices and making it easier for those individuals to relate to gay people with whom they come into contact.
It’s not just about passing legislation, it’s about changing people’s attitudes. And that’s where Mary has done a lot of good. It’s too bad some gay activists can’t recognize the significance of Mary’s story. And the importance of the public statements by the Vice President — and his wife — distancing himself from his boss on this of all issues.
Eva understands what’s at stake. Let’s hope that others do.
You give new meaning to the term “fruity.”
Does anyone else see irony in the fact that someone named “Kiwi” is calling Dan “fruity”? You can’t make this stuff up even in a comedy skit writers group in Studio City.
This is just the old assimilationist vs activism argument under new guise. The truth is that you need both kinds of people, Mary Cheney and say, Larry Kramer. But f the gay and lesbian movement for equality were only populated by the Mary Cheney’s of the world, it wouldn’t get very far at all.
The action of Bush to support the FMA is one of the great moral failures of his administration. I’m not willing to give Cheny any brownie points for not speaking out against it at the time. It might have been more politically advantageous for her to remain involved in her fathers campaign, but that doesn’t make her a GOP morally courageous champion of gay rights.
You always seem to be looking for such champions in the Republican Party Dan. But it just doesn’t offer very many examples of that. So like a starving mouse you pretend that a few leftover crumbs at the dinner table are an enormous gourmet feast.
Although I haven’t read Mary Cheney’s book, I did listen to her being interviewed on talk radio. She came across wonderfully. No matter what Mary Cheney or any other gay/lesbian person of similar mind does or doesn’t do–there will always be those who just can’t get past seeing homosexuality as an “abomination before the Lord ” and refuse to look at any legal/policy issue in a logical. I had one guy add to a post of mine that I could change my orientation if I just opened up my heart (my post had nothing to do with God, church, or theology). I have enjoyed this site although I really don’t visit it much. Few places a can get a balanced political viewpoint from gay folks.
“You can’t make this stuff up even in a comedy skit writers group in Studio City.”
And there goes GrampaGryph, proving the point one more time.
Take off your partisan and bigot blinders, Gryph –there are many gays and pro-gay leaders in the GOP who advance gay rights a lot farther than the barn-burning, brick-throwing “activists” you make your political bed with. Quietly, effectively through leadership and example.
Rather than criticize an entire group of people for which you show nothing but distain and contempt, why don’t you turn your “creative” energies on and get those bottom feeding slugs at SLDN off their collective duffs and press THEM to work effectively toward change rather than the HRC-play-book of activism via press stunts.
Gosh, what passes for “informed opinion” these days has been on a downward slide since the Left found blogs.
Mary Cheney is fine, she can do as she chooses. However, I don’t really buy your arguement that she has done MORE than most gay activists. I advocate for all gay people to live their life openly and honestly because yes, everytime we do that, we do help sow the seeds of change, influencing our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends. To that end, Mary Cheney should be comended. Fortunately, that is something we can all do that will help bring the laws of this country more in line to where they should be.
And yet, Mary Cheney, as the Vice-President’s daughter, has a platform that would allow her to do so much more than what the average person can. So, should we then be satisified with her contributing just what the average person can? I know I’m not.
And I still don’t understand her angry over John Kerry mentioning she was a lesbian in one of the 2004 Presidential debates. He said nothing wrong.
You all are a bunch of freaks!
Erik, you make a spirited defense of your work — and that of other activists. Thanks for doing that.
But, try to understand her anger over Kerry’s mentioning her in the debate. Traditionally, the children of opponents have been off limits in political campaigns. It simply wasn’t appropriate for him to do so.
He brought up Mary’s sexuality largely because he sought to divide the president from his conservative base. It’s one thing for the Vice President to talk about his own daughter. It’s another thing for the man seeking to unseat to do so. And that’s the issue.
Dan, no offense intended but the old adage of “hands off the kids” usually pertained to underage, vulnerable kids who aren’t an appropriate target for the trench politics of a campaign. Mary is hardly a kid… and she was involved in the campaign, active with Dad’s team on the trail. Kerry-Edwards’ comments were within bounds –at least to this GOPer. We aren’t talking about Harry and Will after Di’s divorce.
Now, I think it was entirely inappropriate for people to raise the question of “Where is HowieDean’s wife” during the campaign and imply she was either hostile to her husband’s race, frightened of the political arena, or flawed in some major way that the campaign hacks didn’t want America to know about… she was decidedly NOT a political operative or involved in the operations of the campaign. BUt her absence was made to be an accusation.
Unlike Mary Cheney. (Right, it seems strange for me to be defending anything about HowieDean… who I still think is a snake oil salesman and ego maniac). Mary as a lesbian? Did anyone not know that? Probably the same 3 people who still think Barry Bonds did it naturally.
I agree that HRC should promote Cheney’s position in opposition to the marriage amendment. I also agree that living openly has powerful political effects, no matter who does it: left, right, or center. And I hope that Mary Cheney’s decision–finally–to speak does have a positive impact within the Republican Party.
But those points could have been made–and made far more effectively–without burying them in all sorts of bashing of activists or liberals and without trying to portray Mary Cheney as some sort of Martin Luther King, Jr. of gay people. The fact is there is great deal more than she could have done–compare Candance Gingrich–but Mary chose not to. Criticism of that choice is fair game.
The sorry fact is that if the GOP held all the seats in the House and Senate, the marriage amendment would have easily passed with the required 2/3 majority, and no amount of ranting about activists and liberals will erase that ugly truth or the deliberate decision of the party to demonize gays and lesbians and whip up antigay bigotry in order turn out right-wing voters in 2004. That was a central component of the campaign, a campaign in which Mary Cheney chose to play a leading role. Why didn’t she publish the same book in the summer of 2004 instead of the summer of 2006? I welcome it in 2006, but it would have been more significant in 2004.
I don’t even think it was THAT complicated, GPW.
What Mary recognized is that Kerry’s “kind words” were nothing but a cloak for the fact that he supported discrimination against her based on a characteristic with which he says she was born. It was like a segregationist making remarks about how much he loves black people, but that their skin color means they should be legally inferior.
EVERY gay person on the planet with a shred of self-respect should have been angry over Kerry’s words.
The fact is there is great deal more than she could have done–compare Candance Gingrich–but Mary chose not to. Criticism of that choice is fair game.
The only thing Candace Gingrich did that Mary Cheney didn’t was turn on her family and the Republican Party and start shrieking about how awful they were publicly.
The problem with gay activism is that making noise is often confused with creating change. This is why people like Candace Gingrich, who endorsed homophobes like Bill Clinton and John Kerry and demanded gays contribute millions of dollars to them to spend on promoting their homophobic messages, are considered “activists”, while people like Mary Cheney are not.
NDT says:
And if her family, including Newt, were Democrats you would be applauding and goading her on.
Mary Cheney is no hero. While you may see it as a brave decision to stand aside while the Republican party rolled over GLBT people, I cannot. Mary Cheney may not particularly care about the right to be with her loved one in the hospital or fear a world that does not accept them. She has a powerful father and enough money to grease any wheels that stand in her way. Very few other GLBT fighting for their rights in the trenches of the political battlefield have the same luxury.
And if her family, including Newt, were Democrats you would be applauding and goading her on.
And if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his butt every time he jumped.
You can “if” all you want, Gryph. Doesn’t change what IS.
“He brought up Mary’s sexuality largely because he sought to divide the president from his conservative base. It’s one thing for the Vice President to talk about his own daughter. It’s another thing for the man seeking to unseat to do so. And that’s the issue”
I would agree with that wholeheartedly, Dan. It seems that a lot of liberals and Democrats from the party think that conservatives despise gay people. So, in doing that, Kerry wanted Bush to be despised by conservatives. Not only he spoke for someone he didn’t know and the child of someone he was campaigning against, he wanted to “gay up” the President and his base, thinking that conservatives would just not vote for him because ‘they hate gay people’. What a stupid assumption on their part. They are too much in the collective herd mentality to understand there is one thing about a process of beliefs and convictions commonly shared with individual differences, to idealogically keeping their thought base pure, not matter the consequences. I would say liberals/Democrats currently suffer from the latter.
#21 Mary Cheney lives her life. That is what makes her a hero. She is not afraid to mention her sexuality, but it does not make her who she is. She is an individual and a seemingly wonderful and intelligent person. I wonder how you can assume that it’s ‘all about her father’. Perhaps she’s not shoving her sexuality down people’s faces which pisses the left off and just showing what gay people are; individuals with their lives to lead and their own personal convictions.
Of those who are railing against her decision to remain with her father’s campain, how many read the chapter on why she did ?
One item she brings up is that extreme activists have been threatening to out her since her father was Defence Sec. If this is how they want to treat her, why does she owe them anything ?
While she is low key about it, she is advancing her cause by example (which is a very Republican mindset), not demaning a sweeping, frictional, government fix. In the end, the only one she has to answer to is herself.
Wendy you’re steailng my thunder. 🙂 I plan on addressing the point you raise in your second paragraph in a subsequent post on her book.
NDT:
“And if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his butt every time he jumped.”
Hey! Don’t bring Frogs into this!!! 🙂
I wrote this about MC on a liberal friend’s blog:
I just can’t get all fluffed up about a lesbian daughter campaigning for her conservative father, who, irregardless of the gay marriage issue, has otherwise shown her and her partner great respect. It’s a family thing. If my little librother decided to run for political office (God help us all) and asked me to work on his campaign, I probably would, even though our political philosophies differ greatly on many issues; especially if I thought the opposition candidate was an ebloviating blow hard, and would be a worse politician than my little brother.
I’m not sure if she is a hero, but she is a woman who is dedicated to her family, who is also dedicated and supportive of her. That counts for something. I have met many gays whose parents have disowned them. My question is this.
Why is it horrible for the parents to disown the gay child for being gay, but OK for a gay child to disown the parents for not approving of something they don’t understand. I mean, really, don’t gay radicals treat gay conservative in the same irrational condescending way that “homophobic” parents do???
Let’s at least get this straight. A defense of Mary Cheney doesn’t have to slam LGBT activists on the left. That’s juvenile. If you can’t understand the passion of those who work in the trenches every day to advance LGBT rights, and if you can’t abide their sometimes over-the-top seriousness, then at least just sit quietly. Advances will come as the result both of those loud voices and quieter ones like Mary’s, not either of them exclusively. Grow up and stop thinking of this fight as race to see which tactic can claim the most credit.
I wrote:
I mean, really, don’t gay radicals treat gay conservative in the same irrational condescending way that “homophobic” parents do???
I meant:
I mean, really, don’t gay radicals treat gay conservative in the same irrational condescending way that “homophobic” parents treat their gay children?”
I wish I could write as well as Hitch does whilst intoxicated!
I’m writing regarding sonicfrog’s post.
I’d have to say that I consider myself to be an activist when it comes to gay rights. Yes, I’m a liberal, but I’ll read posts and articles from both liberal and conservative sources so that I can get a balance of information.
When I came out to my parents, my mother asked me what would happen if she couldn’t learn to accept my being gay. I immediately answered that she and I would have no relationship, and she knew I meant it. My reason for that choice was that I’d wasted too many years trying to live up to her expectations of who she envisioned me to be, and I was just tired of it. It required too much lying and switching of pronouns whenever I spoke to her, and it is not truly in my nature to lie.
To compare my situation with that of Mary Cheney, I’d have to say that our relationships with our parents simply reflect the choices we’ve made.
In retrospect, I realize my choice to give my mother an ultimatum was wrong; Mary’s choice is more graceful. Whether the parent accepts a gay child or not, the more noble thing is for the gay child to be the bigger person, and to keep the lines of communication open.
I wound up softening my stance. After my militant phase (ages 21 to 24), I was finally able to have conversations with my mother regarding GBLT issues in a (may the liberal gods forgive me) conservative tone. We participated in a true exchange in which I was better able to understand her point of view, and she mine. By the time I was 28, she’d met my partner, whom she loves, and attended her first GBLT banquet at a National Educators Association conference. She even supported referanda admonishing bullying of children in schools based on real or perceived sexual orientation.
At the same time, I can’t really say that a gay child disowning an unaccepting parent is the same as an unaccepting parent disowning a gay child. The parent’s job is to love his or her child unconditionally, period. When a parent disowns a gay child, that parent is doing so, basically, because the child fails to live up to the expectation the parent has of what the child is to do with his or her life. This is something that many parents do with regard to careers, the choice of whom to marry…The parent imposes an expectation on the child with or without telling. If the child is unable to meet that expectation, there is conflict.
When a gay child cuts him- or herself off from a parent, it is not a good thing, but it’s because he or she expects to the parent to do his or her job, which is to love the child no matter what. That would include full acceptance. It’s ideal, but it’s better to aim for the moon and miss by a mile than to aim for a mud puddle and hit it dead on. In other words, the gay child should not settle for less, but strive for the highest standard.
Now the question is thus: Does Mary Cheney have full acceptance, or does she settle for less than that? She may be content with what she has, but that would depend on what her expectations are.
Read her book, James, she clearly has full acceptance.
If you can’t understand the passion of those who work in the trenches every day to advance LGBT rights, and if you can’t abide their sometimes over-the-top seriousness, then at least just sit quietly.
How did the gay left’s donation of tens of millions of dollars, unqualified endorsement and support, and constant chants of “pro-gay” and “gay-supportive” advance gay rights one whit — since they spent it on Democratic homophobes like Clinton and Kerry who supported legislation and amendments to permanently strip gays of rights?
The reason Mary Cheney is being bashed is because she and the existence of people like her threaten the stranglehold that gay leftists like Elizabeth Birch and Joe Solmonese hold on the “gay vote”. These peoples’ incomes directly depend on their ability to deliver votes and financial support to their Democratic massas. Mary Cheney has exposed Elizabeth Birch and others as the lying hypocrites that they are, bashing others for allegedly “supporting homophobes”, when they channel enormous sums of cash away from REAL causes to support their own party homophobes.
Meanwhile, “DCposter”, we don’t HAVE to abide their thuggish behavior. We call it what it is, which is criminal activity and harassment, and we’re not under the belief that the American public will ever tolerate it. We think that these crimes and this hypocrisy committed by the gay left in the name of “gay rights” are a HUGE part of the reason that people view gays with suspicion.
I agree. When have the big gay lobbies – GLAAD, HRC, National Socialist Gay and Lesbian Task Force, etc. – advanced gay rights lately?
In the 80s and 90s, when by the way I was active in many of these groups… they were the only ones out there fighting for us and they were more responsible and serious in their efforts. HRC was actually serious about bi-partisanship. GLAAD had a lot of anti-gay media bias to combat, and did a pretty good job of it. PFLAG really helped individual parents and families struggling to come to terms with a loved one’s homosexuality. N(S)GLTF were always too leftist for me, but at least their arguments and statistics were occasionally useful as I fought for gay rights.
Today, GLAAD spends its time and energy on ridiculous trivia – like worshipping Hollywood celebrities and bashing Gene Shalit for a NON-homophobic and fair review of Brokeback Mountain. HRC has mired itself in the one-party State of Democratic orthodoxy. PFLAG has gone off the cliff, into Bush-bashing. No leading gay group has had the slightest effectiveness in fighting the State anti-gay-marriage amendments. They’re all just money-making machines, accomplishing practically nothing.
I still think Mary Cheney’s book and her appearances on shows like Larry King and others will do more for gays than all the ACT UP bomb throwing SLDN types who choose to wage our community’s battles –without our consent– in the corridors of judical fiat rather than in the marketplace of democratic ideals, elections and populism.
Mary put a human face on being gay. She did it without stereotypes, without three snaps, and without drawing the bigots’ fire. She should be Time’s Person of the Year.
Gay Patriot, the question was rhetorical. 🙂 I’m going to read her book; I’ve been waiting for it since I first read of her plans to write it.
While you may see it as a brave decision to stand aside while the Republican party rolled over GLBT people, I cannot.
The reason it is so important that Mary Cheney has simply lived openly but quietly as a lesbian is that conservatives respect that dignity far more than pretty much anything else. You won’t convince a social conservative that gays are Us rather than Them by screaming about legislation and fighting with them. You will convince many social conservatives with everyday strength, courtesy, and dignity–by living your life the way they expect adults to behave. Making noise is not a conservative’s idea of dignity.
The way to gay rights is not through legislation. Laws may help but laws are made by the elected, who answer to the people. All the lobbying in the world isn’t going to make a social conservative from Kansas vote for same-sex marriage; it is changing the opinions of his/her constituents that will get him/her to make that vote. And as I said, the way to do that is to live with dignity.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood.