Mary Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and a lesbian mom, gave a $1000 donation to the Senate campaign of former Rep. Rob Portman (R-OH) in May. The interesting part? Portman voted against same-sex marriage and allowing gay couples to adopt children in the District of Columbia.
Raw Story has the full story, including a link to a copy of Portman’s FEC filing listing Cheney’s donation.
What do you all think of this? On the one hand, not all of us are single-issue voters, and LGBT rights might not, in fact, be our first consideration when evaluating a candidate. Fair enough. Also, I know opinion on the importance of marriage equality is split even within the LGBT community. On the other hand, I don’t think I could donate to a candidate who voted against adoption rights for same-sex parents, unless he had done so for some procedural reason and I knew he was really in favor of them (which doesn’t seem to be the case here). I therefore can’t excuse Mary Cheney for her donation, especially when the rights impacted families in her own backyard. (Cheney and her partner Heather Poe live in Virginia.)
Your thoughts?
Maybe Mary Cheney was just pretending to be gay to help win over some LBGT support for the Bush administration.