V.P. CHENEY'S LESBIAN DAUGHTER NOW 'ABOVE RADAR'

Gay job for Cheney daughter
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 23/04/2002)

THE lesbian daughter of Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, is to take her first steps into the political limelight. Mary Cheney has joined a Republican group whose aim is to persuade party leaders to accept gay men and women into their ranks.

Miss Cheney, who maintains a close relationship with her family, attended her father's inauguration with her girlfriend. She had said previously that she was a political independent determined to remain "below the radar".

But yesterday she was "outed" as a Republican by the gay Right-wing commentator Andrew Sullivan.

Miss Cheney told Mr Sullivan that she had joined the board of the Republican Unity Coalition, which aims to fight for gay people and persuade them that the party is not a bastion of hostile religious conservatives.

She said: "We can expand the party's outreach to non-traditional Republicans; we can make sexual orientation a non-issue for the party; and we can help achieve equality for all gay and lesbian Americans."