It's time for Mary Cheney to speak up. It won't be easy for her to do. She will have to contend with both the Republican Party and, perhaps more tricky, her own family dynamics. During the presidential campaign, both of these formidable forces appeared to try to keep Mary Cheney out of sight and out of mind.
But now that the election is over, and Mary has "proven" her commitment to her father and his political party, she needs to step out of their shadow and speak up.
Ever since Cheney's father was chosen as George W. Bush's vice presidential running mate, the once openly lesbian Mary—who even spent time doing the leather events circuit as part of her job to promote Coors Brewing Company to gays and lesbians—has kept a very low profile. You might even call it stealth.
The rest of us can only speculate why this might be the case. And indeed, there has been much speculation. Most of the reports, which seem to universally cite "unnamed sources close to Mary Cheney," tend to indicate that Mary is close to her father, and may have agreed to keep a low profile in order to minimize the controversy her sexuality would stir up with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party.
There were also some hints that the Cheney family itself was applying pressure to Mary to essentially go back in the closet. The most glaring was mother Lynn Cheney's outburst in a nationally televised interview with Cokie Roberts. When Roberts mentioned the Cheneys had an openly gay daughter—a fact well known not only in Washington, D.C., but throughout the country—Lynn Cheney went into epileptic fits. As well as denying that Mary had ever "declared" herself any such thing, Lynn Cheney took on the family's hard-line stance that they were not going to talk about Mary's sexuality. Then Ms. Cheney adopted the family's, and the Republican Party's, clever trick of reprimanding the media for even asking, feigning shock that anyone would dare ask about such "personal" questions.
Of course, the Republican Party and the Cheneys were all too happy to parade their heterosexual daughter and her husband and kids in front of the cameras whenever a photo op presented itself.
This double standard was painfully clear the night George W. Bush was nominated by the Republicans. On the stage alongside the Cheneys, the heterosexual daughter stood proudly on stage with her husband and kids. Meanwhile, Mary stood up there solo, even though she has lived with another woman in a long-term relationship, and media reports even noted that the Cheneys are friendly with Mary's partner.
Regardless of personal politics, most of us can understand the compromises a daughter might be willing to make during a closely contested presidential election where her father stood to become vice president of the country. Under those conditions, the rest of us can't know what pressures must have been on Mary—political as well as familial. But we all have families, and most of us have at one time or another been willing to make personal compromises for the ones we love.
Some would say that is reasonable, even admirable.
But as many of the rest of us also know from our own family experiences, there also comes a time when, as a gay or lesbian son or daughter, we must firmly resist and reject our family's attempts to closet us, whatever the reasons. The particulars of the Cheney family may be uncommon, but the predicament is not. A mother and father—who appear to love their gay child—seem to be applying pressure on the child to stay in the closet to protect the father's political career an save the family "embarrassment."
Many of us have been in the same situation, in one form or another.
I think of my own family. For many years after my mother and sister privately came to terms with me being gay, they still asked me why I "had to be so public about it." Both said they were worried for my physical safety. That was probably partially true. But I also know that at the time, they were both deeply embarrassed that I was gay, and even more embarrassed that I was not appropriately ashamed. My sister also wondered if she might be discriminated against at work. And she would never tell the men she dated that I was gay until well into a relationship. She feared men would reject her because she had a gay brother.
Some would argue that these problems, and the various ones that most of us have had to navigate around our families and our gayness, are of a different magnitude than those the Cheney family faces. But there is one core equivalent that is a constant and doesn't change even if your disapproving parent is the vice president of the United States. And that is the all-important question of individual dignity—in this case, for Mary herself.
Most of us don't want to hurt our parents, regardless of how they feel about us as their gay and lesbian sons and daughters. Any gay person who has ever had to challenge a parent they love knows how hard, even how heart breaking, that task can be. But we also know how rewarding it can be—not only to us, but in the long run, to our families, too.
Again, I draw on my own personal experiences. My once mortified mother and sister eventually progressed from the self-conscious relatives who wondered what the neighbors would think, to being fully supportive and marching with me in gay pride parades.
Perhaps it is too much to expect the Cheneys to do the same for their daughter. But Mary has the right to ask. Let's hope she finds the courage to do so, too.
Mubarak Dahir receives email at MubarakDah@aol.com
