Cheney's daughter on family dinners, Kerry and coming out

Must be tough living in a family when your dad wants to make you a second class citizen because you are gay. It's clear from this article Cheney's daughter was emotionally torn between supporting her father and realizing that support underhanded a movement for equal rights for Gay people.

Interesting how she reserves most of her anger for John Kerry, the man who wanted to extend civil rights to everyone and who pointed out that disconnect in a 2004 debate. I can understand her reaction, as one's sexual preference should be a private matter, but when one's father is making an anti-gay platform a major part of his strategy to win votes, and you are actively involved in campaigning for him, it seems only fair to bring up this point. - IFK Editor

It was as the vice-president's lesbian daughter that Ms Cheney became known to the broader American public when she essentially ran his 2004 re-election campaign. She was also involved in the 2000 race, but at that time her mother, Lynne Cheney, was saying in public that her daughter had not come out as a lesbian. By the time of the 2004 elections the Republicans were using their opposition to gay marriage to win votes.

Homosexual rights were an election issue, and so was Ms Cheney's sexuality as she worked to restore an administration opposed to gay marriage to the White House. Republicans were denouncing gays and lesbians as "selfish hedonists".

Ms Cheney admits her discomfort with that position. She writes that she had planned to be in the gallery for the president's state of the union speech in 2004, but cancelled when she saw a text in which he pledged to defend the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.

"I didn't want to be there when the members of the House and Senate and all the invited guests applauded the president's declaration," she writes. "I sure wasn't going to stand up and cheer."