Openly critical
From Brian Todd
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- For someone who tries to stay in the background, Mary Cheney can't escape.
The Democrats have made the vice president's openly gay daughter an election issue -- especially in the last two debates.
When asked Wednesday if he thought homosexuality was a choice, Sen. John Kerry responded: "I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was. She's being who she was born as."
The Cheney family was not amused.
"Sen. Kerry was out of line to even bring my daughter into it," Vice President Cheney said. "It was inappropriate and I was surprised that he would even do something like that."
Cheney's wife added, "This is not a good man. Of course, I am speaking as a mom -- and a pretty indignant mom -- and this is not a good man. ... What a cheap and tawdry political trick."
Kerry issued a statement Thursday in response, saying, "I love my daughters. They love their daughter. I was trying to say something positive about the way strong families deal with the issue."
In the vice-presidential debate a week earlier, Cheney answered a question about the issue of gay marriage.
Asked to respond, Sen. John Edwards said, "... You can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter."
An official with the Bush-Cheney campaign told the "Wolf Blitzer Reports" staff that those comments by Kerry and Edwards were, in his words, "gratuitous."
Mary Cheney's sister Elizabeth characterized Edwards' comment in similar terms.
"He didn't have a lot of substance to talk about on this issue," she said, "and so it seemed that ... he could eat up some of his time by ... talking about [my sister.]"
Edwards defended himself last Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition."
"The point was to recognize that the vice president, like millions of parents in this country, want their children to be happy," said Edwards.
