Gay Marriage: A Dispute in the Cheney Family

Like father, like daughter. Liz Cheney takes after her father, who was vice president to George W. Bush. She has the same pugnacity, the same disdain for Barack Obama, and the same reverence for presidential war powers — her senior thesis topic.

Forty-seven years old and mother to five children, Dick Cheney’s daughter left Washington for Wyoming, where the family has roots, and where she has her sights set on a Senate seat. A Republican — Mike Enzi, elected and re-elected since 1997 — already holds the position, but no matter. He will have to brave a primary in August 2014 for the election in November.

Liz shares her father’s views. After the Iraq invasion, she took on the role of principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. She headed the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group, whose members met at the Pentagon and attempted to promote regime change in Tehran. After her departure from the administration, along with other neoconservatives, Liz founded the organization Keep America Safe. One of its most vehement campaigns was to condemn as unpatriotic the lawyers who defending the Guantanamo detainees charged with the 9/11 attacks. Liz called them the “al-Qaida 7,” as if legal defense was the same as ideological support.

Since she announced her bid for the Wyoming Senate seat, the website has disappeared, like the organization itself. She, who launched a war against a Republican she considered too moderate, does not cease to condemn Obama the troublemaker, who has “has launched a war on our Second Amendment rights, he’s launched a war on our religious freedom, he’s used the IRS to launch a war on our freedom of speech and he’s used the EPA to launch a war on Wyoming’s ranchers, our farmers and our energy industry.”

Liz has a younger sister — Mary, a lesbian, who married her partner Heather Poe in 2012, as soon as they were able to legally. As conservative as he is, Dick Cheney has never disowned his daughter nor condemned gay marriage. Running in the very conservative state of Wyoming, Liz chose to speak out against it.

Sunday, on Fox News, she reiterated her opposition. Several hours later, her sister replied on her Facebook page, “Liz — this isn’t just an issue on which we disagree — you’re just wrong — and on the wrong side of history.”

Heather, Mary’s wife, pointed out her sister-in-law’s hypocrisy:

“Yes, Liz,” she added, “in 15 states and the District of Columbia you are my sister-in-law.”

“Liz has been a guest in our home, has spent time and shared holidays with our children … To have her now say she doesn’t support our right to marry is offensive to say the least.”