Mary Cheney

Mary Claire Cheney (born March 14, 1969) is the younger of the two daughters of Dick Cheney, the 46th vice president of the United States and 17th United States secretary of defense, and Lynne Cheney.

She is involved with a number of political action committees.

She attended McLean High School in McLean, Virginia, graduating in the class of 1987.

Following that, she attended Colorado College, her mother and sister's alma mater, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and graduated in 1991.

Mary Cheney has been with her wife, Heather Poe, since 1992.

Cheney has voiced support for same-sex marriage, and has been credited with encouraging her father's approval of it, which he has publicly supported since leaving the vice presidency.

In 1993, she became one of the first employees of the Colorado Rockies baseball team, working in promotions when the team began playing in Denver; thereafter, she was a public relations manager for the Coors Brewing Company, and worked as a gay outreach coordinator, helping to end a national Coors strike and boycott by gays.

She has been one of her father's top campaign aides and closest confidantes.

In 2000, the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign freely discussed Liz Cheney's marriage and children, but were silent about Mary Cheney's private life.

Nevertheless, Cheney's sexual orientation was publicly known, and some considered her presence during the campaign as bolstering, providing the Republican ticket with a "compassionate conservative" image.

During an interview with Lynne Cheney, Cokie Roberts brought up the topic of Mary Cheney's having declared herself gay.

Lynne Cheney responded by stating that "Mary has never declared such a thing", and criticized Roberts and the media for their interest in the story.

She earned a graduate business degree from the University of Denver in 2002.

In 2002, Mary Cheney joined the Republican gay-straight alliance Republican Unity Coalition and said that sexual orientation should be "a non-issue" for the Republican Party.

In July 2003, she became the Director of Vice Presidential Operations for the Bush re-election campaign in 2004.

Cheney resigned from the RUC's board and in July 2003 became the director of vice presidential operations for the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign.

In 2004, public attention focused again on Cheney's sexuality, when the Bush administration supported the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would limit marriage to heterosexual couples and ban civil unions and domestic partnership benefits.

Cheney did not publicly express her opinion of the amendment at the time.

In August 2004, Dick Cheney reiterated the position he took in the 2000 presidential campaign: that the issue should be handled by individual state governments.

In December 2006, Mary Cheney was reported to be pregnant.

She and Poe were said to be "ecstatic" about the baby.

"The vice president and Mrs. Cheney are looking forward with eager anticipation to the arrival of their sixth grandchild," spokesperson Lea Anne McBride said on December 5.

In her 2006 autobiography Now It's My Turn, Cheney stated her opposition to the amendment.

However, at the time, she remained silent to support Bush's re-election bid.

Cheney was vice president of standards and practices at AOL, leaving in 2007.

On January 31, 2007, in a forum by Glamour Magazine at Barnard College of Columbia University, Mary Cheney stated that: "This is a baby... This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. It is my child."

She gave birth to her first child, a son, in May 2007.

Cynthia Leive, editor in chief of Glamour, asked Cheney if she had anything to say to critics like James Dobson, who has denounced same-sex marriage and LGBT people raising children.

Cheney accused Dobson of distorting the research he cited, and added: "Every piece of remotely responsible research that has been done in the last 20 years has shown there is no difference between children raised by same-sex parents and children raised by opposite-sex parents; what matters is being raised in a stable, loving environment."

She also said that Dobson was entitled to his opinion, "but he's not someone whose endorsement I have ever drastically sought".

Cheney gave birth to her second child, a daughter, on November 18, 2009.

She married her wife, Heather Poe, in 2012, and was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case in 2013.

Cheney was born in Madison, Wisconsin.

Cheney and Poe were married on June 22, 2012, in Washington, D.C. The family resides in Great Falls, Virginia.

In 2013, Mary Cheney's older sister Liz, who was running for a Senate seat in Wyoming, stated during an interview on Fox News Sunday that she did not support same-sex marriage.

In response, Mary Cheney denounced her sister's remarks, writing in a Facebook post, "Either You think all families should be treated equally or you don't. Liz's position is to treat my family as second class citizens."

Mary subsequently said she would not support her sister's candidacy and would boycott visiting the rest of the Cheney family for Christmas that year.

In 2013, her wife Heather Poe wrote a Facebook post stating, "Liz has been a guest in our home, has spent time and shared holidays with our children, and when Mary and I got married in 2012 – she didn't hesitate to tell us how happy she was for us. To have her now say she doesn't support our right to marry is offensive to say the least."

In 2015, when asked if she and her sister had mended their relationship, Mary Cheney said, "I don't have to answer that."

However, in 2021, Liz told 60 Minutes they had reconciled after she admitted to Mary that she had been wrong in her views on same-sex marriage.