Mary Cheney Publicly
Defends Her Pregnancy
By KATHARINE Q.
SEELYE, NYTimes on the Web, January 31, 2007
Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of
Vice President Dick Cheney, today for the first time publicly defended her
decision to become pregnant and asserted that same-sex couples are equally
capable of raising children as heterosexual couples.
“When Heather and I decided to have a baby, I knew it wasn’t going to be the
most popular decision,” Ms. Cheney said, referring to her partner of 15 years,
Heather Poe. She then gestured to her middle — any bulge disguised by a
boxy jacket — and asserted: “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, on either side of a political issue. It is my child.”
Ms. Cheney, 37, was speaking at a panel discussion sponsored by Glamour magazine
at Barnard College in Manhattan. The baby, whose sex she has not publicly
disclosed, is due this spring and will be the sixth grandchild for the vice
president and his wife. Ms. Cheney, who is vice president of consumer
advocacy for AOL and lives in Virginia, has not said how she became pregnant.
Her father became testy last week during a CNN interview when the host Wolf
Blitzer asked what he thought of conservatives — specifically James C. Dobson,
founder of Focus on the Family— who are critical of his daughter Mary’s
pregnancy.
In refusing to answer, Mr. Cheney told Mr. Blitzer that he was “over the line.”
Ms. Cheney said in a brief interview after the panel that she was not speaking
for her father, but that when she saw the interview, she also felt Mr. Blitzer
had crossed a line. “He was trying to get a rise out of my father,” she
said.
Today at the panel discussion, inside a stuffy room decorated by portraits of
stern-looking former Barnard presidents, Cindi Leive, the editor of Glamour,
asked Ms. Cheney if she had anything to say to critics like Mr. Dobson.
Mr. Dobson wrote in Time magazine last month that years of social research
“indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by
their married mother and father.” He also wrote that his group believes
that “birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples.”
(Two of the researchers whom Mr. Dobson cited in his article have complained
that Mr. Dobson distorted their views and said they disagreed with his
conclusions.)
Ms. Cheney noted Mr. Dobson’s distortions of 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 said Mr. Dobson was entitled to his opinion, “but he’s not someone whose
endorsement I have ever drastically sought.”
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