LeftOut
by Daryl Moore

Get Out of the Closet, Dick Cheney
Asking the Republican candidate for vice president some direct questions about his daughter's rights

Dick Cheney is a proud father of two adult daughters. He thinks his daughters are "fine women." He says he's "very proud of both of them." But he thinks that "their private lives are private." Since he's the one running for office, he thinks his daughters are "entitled to their privacy." Dick's wife, Lynne Cheney, is proud of her daughters, too. She thinks she has "two wonderful daughters" who are "bright, hard-working, and decent." When the subject of her daughters comes up, Mrs. Cheney has also stated, "I simply am not going to talk about their personal lives."

What personal attribute does one of their daughters have that is so personal it must remain private? One daughter is a lesbian. Mary Cheney, their younger daughter, is a 31-year-old out lesbian. She lives with her partner in Colorado, whom she introduces as her "life partner." She came out to her parents in the early '90s. She worked at Coors Brewing Company doing outreach to the gay and lesbian community. By all accounts, Mary Cheney's lesbianism is anything but private.

So why did her mother deny it when asked about it by Cokie Roberts on This Week? Why did Mrs. Cheney say that "Mary has never declared such a thing" as being openly lesbian? And why did she say she was "appalled at the media interest in one of her daughters" and that she was "surprised that Cokie would want to bring it up on this program"? She said it because neither she nor her husband can publicly acknowledge what they have privately accepted: that their daughter is both a lesbian and a fine woman. That she is both homosexual and decent. However hypocritical, I suppose their approach is par for the political course.

What is surprising is that the Cheneys actually believed they could get a free pass from the press by shoving their 31-year-old daughter back into the closet. What is appalling is that Dick Cheney, a former congressman from Wyoming, actually believed that he would not be required to reconcile his votes on gay and lesbian issues with the well-known fact that one of his daughters is not-by any stretch of the imagination-a "private" lesbian.

What is most disturbing is that the Cheneys' stonewalling has so far been effective with the press. No one has asked either of them any tough questions. Cokie's question about the impact of a national campaign on the Cheneys' lesbian daughter was a softball. Tim Russert didn't even broach the subject in a half-hour interview with Dick Cheney. And The New York Times, whose slogan is "All the news that's fit to print," has thus far decided that the would-be vice-president's public stand on issues that adversely affect his daughter is not news that's fit to print. For some reason, the press took the bait when the Cheneys screamed "privacy" and has refused to do its job of comparing the Cheneys' political views to their personal lives. The press needs to wake up. The issue isn't privacy. And it's not about "outing" Mary Cheney. She's already "out." This is about "outing" Dick Cheney's abysmal political stands on gay and lesbian issues. It's about determining whether Cheney has any compassion to go along with his strident conservatism. It's time for Cheney to answer some tough political questions like:

• As the former Secretary of Defense, do you support the current "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy even though it precludes your daughter from serving in the U.S. military?
• Do you agree with Governor Bush's stand that your daughter and her partner should not be able to adopt children because they are lesbians?
• If you had known your daughter was a lesbian back in 1988, would you still have voted against the "Hate Crimes Statistics Act," which simply allowed the government to collect data on violent crimes that were based on the victim's race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation?
• Why wasn't Mary out front and cen-ter at the Republican National Convention wooing gay and lesbian voters while George P-George W's telegenic Hispanic nephew-was out front and center wooing Hispanics? Contrary to the Cheneys' loud protestations, these questions are fair even if they are personal. Why? Because we all know that when people run for national office, their private lives become subject to public scrutiny. Fair or not, it's been that way for years.

For years, we've been asking candidates who oppose abortion what they would do if their wife or daughter became pregnant after being raped. For years, we've been asking candidates who oppose school vouchers why they send their own children to private school. Indeed, just this year, we asked George W-who's taken a tough stance on drugs-whether he's had something up his nose that we should know about.

So it's time for the press to take off the gloves. Because, this is not about Mary Cheney's request for personal privacy, it's about Dick Cheney's request for po-litical asylum on an issue that belongs in the public arena, not in someone's political closet.

Writing from the liberal end of the spectrum, Houston attorney Daryl Moore has a general practice and is board-certified in civil appellate law. He can be reached at DarylMoore@ outsmartmagazine.com.