HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT.

MARY CHENEY MAY BE SILENT, BUT HER PRESENCE SPEAKS VOLUMES ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FAMILY AND SEXUAL IDENTITY

When Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush tapped Dick Cheney to be his running mate, Cheney's daughter Mary became the subject of a media hunt. With good reason: As the lesbian daughter of a conservative Republican running on a platform that vows opposition to any bills granting protections based on "sexual preference," Mary Cheney raises uncomfortable questions about the relationship between family and politics. But if she has any observations about those issues, she has kept them to herself. Although Mary Cheney was front and center with her family during the Republican convention in Philadelphia, by mid August she had yet to speak to the media.

It's not for want of trying by reporters. In an attempt to talk to her, The Advocate contacted friends, associates, and former coworkers from Coors Brewing Co. Some had lost contact with her since she left her job as a manager of Coors's corporate relations for the gay and lesbian market. Others, such as activists at Equality Colorado; a statewide gay group, refused to pass along messages out of respect for her privacy. Some people who knew her did not return phone calls, and messages to Cheney's home in Conifer, Colo., went unanswered. Suddenly, the woman who is the first openly gay or lesbian child of a major national candidate (and a conservative one at that) was nowhere to be found--except on television screens across the country as she sat at the Republican convention applauding her father. The silence is particularly striking for someone who until recently made her living doing outreach to gays and lesbians, even touring the country with the 1999 International Mr. Leather to bolster support for Coors among gays and lesbians.

The position that Mary Cheney finds herself in is hardly unique. Other gay and lesbian children of conservative politicians--from Chastity Bono to Dee Mosbacher--have had to strike a balance between relationships with their families and belief in gay rights. Do one's loyalties lie on one side, the other, or somehow on both? The same tension has played itself out across thousands of dining tables in families without famous politicians at the head of them.

"My heart really goes out to Mary Cheney," says Richard Socarides, the former liaison to gays and lesbians for President Clinton. Socarides has had firsthand experience with her dilemma: His father, Charles, is a leading proponent of therapy to "cure" homosexuals. "She faces a terrible choice--either be true to herself or go about this campaign in such a way that won't cause [problems] for her father or her father's party. It's not really a choice. We have to remain open and honest."

"It's a question of what somebody values," says Robert Cabaj, a Bay Area-based psychiatrist and coeditor of Textbook of Homosexuality and Mental Health. "If they value their family, their politics, their identity, people have to set priorities. Maybe Mary prioritizes family and politics and therefore can support those things. I can only imagine. Some people put their belief in party over their own personal issues. I guess in their minds politics is more important than personal identity."

Or it may be that Cheney sees no incongruity between her support for the Republican Party and her work for gay causes. Socarides, a Democrat, believes there is no contradiction in that possibility. "The only way we can lead happy and complete lives is to be open and honest," he says. "If she can conduct herself [in that way] and work for Bush-Cheney, more power to her."

Chastity Bono, who disagreed with her father Sonny's position on gay issues when he served in Congress, says she learned from her own experience that politics is so much a game of power and position that public positions and private beliefs are bound to be at odds. "I was very naive in my thinking," she says. "I still kind of believed in this idea of politicians caring about people and voting based on a belief system of their own as opposed to really a bunch of people who are really trying to keep their jobs. Because their jobs are powerful, these are people with large egos, are really concerned with power and career, and that completely takes over anything else."

The details of Mary Cheney's life, as sketchy as they are, are part of the public record: Cheney, 31, worked at Coors until May, when she quit to pursue an MBA. She and her partner, Heather Poe, live in the Denver suburbs, in a house they own together. Jim McNulty, who cofounded Aspen Gay and Lesbian Community Fund in Aspen, Colo., recalls that Cheney introduced Poe as her "life partner" and that Cheney was "quite" out about her sexuality and her relationship. "During the course of [an evening spent with McNulty and his partner] they kissed and hugged in public," he says. "Which is as it should be."

Individuals who met her through her work for Coors laud her "professional" demeanor. It was a position that requires "awareness and sensitivity to the community," says Bob Witeck, whose public relations firm Cheney hired to work with Coors. Cheney, he says, had both. She did extensive research and outreach within the gay and lesbian world, traveling with Mr. Leather 1999, Bruce Chopnik, around the country in an effort to bolster Coors's image.

While many gays and lesbians do not remember--or never even knew about--the fierce battles played out in the past over the involvement of some members of the Coors family in rightwing causes, a residual bitterness still lingers for others. In her job Mary Cheney was responsible for reassuring people that the past was indeed past and that the company was now gay-friendly, with nondiscrimination protections for employees and domestic-partner benefits. In some ways it is the same reassurance she seems to be offering silently about the Republican Party.

Cheney's silence clearly does not reflect fundamental disagreement with her father. All those who even peripherally know her and her father note their unusually close relationship. "They would go on vacation--just the two of them," says Witeck. "I thought that was incredibly great. It's rare for any adult, let alone an openly lesbian daughter, and her father [to be so close]." The two have traveled together to Russia and South America and enjoy hunting and fly-fishing together. And Mary Cheney quickly hit the campaign trail with her father, serving as an aide.

Yet Dick Cheney has accepted the second slot in a party that would deny his daughter and her partner the right to adopt a child or be protected from discrimination in their workplace. It's a position that, to most, reads as rejection. Some even see the daughter's silence to be as incriminating as the father's actions. "She made a good living off the gay and lesbian community," McNulty says bitterly. "Now I feel she's turned her back on the real issues."

In Mary Cheney's case her father at least seems personally accepting of her sexual orientation. One television appearance, however, indicates her mother may not be so at ease. When reporter Cokie Roberts broached the subject to Lynne Cheney of having a daughter who has come out as a lesbian, Cheney shot back, "Mary has never declared such a thing," and chastised Roberts for intruding on her daughter's privacy. (The campaign has shown less concern for privacy issues when talking about the family life of Mary's sister, Elizabeth, who is married and a mother.) While he lacks the fire-breathing demeanor of many conservative Republicans in Washington today, Dick Cheney certainly compiled as conservative a record as could be imagined on gay and AIDS issues. As a congressman from Wyoming from 1979 to 1989, Cheney voted against the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1988, a bill to provide for the collection of data on violent crimes based on race, religion, ethnicity, or sexuality, and supported an amendment that added antigay rhetoric to the bill. He voted against the AIDS Federal Policy Act of 1988, which would have funded HIV/AIDS testing and counseling (a bill that won the votes of several ultraconservatives, including Tom DeLay and Dick Armey). That same year Cheney voted to cut funding for HIV/AIDS research. Throughout his years in Congress and later as Defense secretary under George Bush pere, Cheney supported the ban on gays in the military.

Still, in an interview with The Washington Post after the Republican convention ended, Cheney allowed that times had changed when it came to gay issues. "Generally, the society is more tolerant today than it used to be, and the party is reflective of that tolerance," he said. But when the paper asked him if the party platform was tolerant, Cheney said, "That's not what you asked me." When pressed to elaborate, he said, "I've gone as far as I'm going to go on this subject."

To be sure, Cheney's record dates back to Mary's childhood. By the time he was leaving Bush's cabinet, Mary was just coming out of the closet to her family. And Betty Berzon, a California-based therapist, applauds Mary's ability to come out in a family that would have closeted a weaker woman. But, she argues, "now [Mary] has the opportunity to make a public statement--to ask her father to support the struggle for gay rights." Berzon, like many gays and lesbians, challenges her to do so.

But Socarides says putting that kind of pressure on Mary Cheney is not fair. "These are difficult personal choices," he says. "This is being played out in public, and it's so personal."

At a press conference August 3, Human Rights Campaign executive director Elizabeth Birch said Mary Cheney's sexuality was an important campaign issue. (HRC has endorsed Al Gore for president.) "It is relevant because Mary's presence is precisely what we have been saying for years; gay people live inside of American families. The fact is this: The presence of Mary Cheney as an open lesbian--that fact alone, that status, her mere presence--shines a light on the fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have positions of grave concern to gay and lesbian people in this country."

For a handful of people, Mary Cheney's experience--both as a lesbian in a conservative family and as a reluctant poster child for the community--is particularly reminiscent of their experiences with their conservative families. For Chastity Bono, Candace Gingrich, and Dee Mosbacher (the lesbian daughter of Robert Mosbacher, Commerce secretary when George Bush was president), it's a replay of recent history when their own conservative families exposed their sexuality on the national political stage.

"Not to be sarcastic," says Candace Gingrich, but the Gingrich clan was "just as horrified I was a Democrat." The family saw her politics--and her lesbianism--as a threat to her brother Newt's ascendancy in the Republican Party. But her activism was in spite of, not because of, her brother. "I found it offensive as an individual to know that political people see me as a second-class citizen," she says. Spotlighted by those who relished the irony of the ultraconservative politician's having a lesbian sister, Candace used the opportunity to become an activist. "It was about workplace discrimination. It was about the concept of family and rights. It was about funding for AIDS research." It was not, she maintains, because she wanted to ruin Newt's career (her mother's biggest concern). "As if I had that much power!" she laughs. But it was a bit easier to be an activist who underscored her brother's hypocrisy. They had never been close (an approximately 23-year age difference ensured that). And even today, they have never confronted each other. But her mother, while still a Republican, has become much more supportive. "She understands that workplace discrimination is wrong," says Candace, "that hate crimes need to be addressed, and"--perhaps most important--"why I'm doing what I'm doing."

Chastity Bono wasn't so lucky. For her, life lessons, activism, and filial loyalty were out of sync. Her father died before she had the opportunity to talk with him about their political divergence. When she spoke with The Advocate in 1998, her pain was still raw: "When he cosponsored DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of gay marriages], I took it very personally. It put a tremendous amount of distance between us, and then he died before we were able to resolve it." Bono was devastated by his death and their missed opportunity. Today, she says, she would have done things differently. "I wouldn't have let it become personal," she maintains. "It's business." Nevertheless, she sees Mary Cheney's current course of action as one she wouldn't be able to tolerate, being the lesbian, and lesbian activist (identities that, she is quick to point out, are not one and the same), that she is. "I would never come out and publicly support the campaign," Bono says.

Mary Cheney has, however. In doing so, she proves that family is a strong word. It's a word that splits many a gay man and lesbian into two parts. And for many, family--with all its turmoil and disagreements--still takes priority.

Wildman is a Washington, D.C.-based writer who has contributed to The Washington Post and The New Republic.