May 25, 2006  |  By: KEITH BOYKIN  | COMMENTS     

MARY CHENEY IS fighting mad. After years of silence, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney is fed up and finally speaking up.

She didn’t speak up two years ago when the GOP tried to “write discrimination” into the U.S. Constitution. She didn’t speak up when her father’s friends in the Republican Party tried to use gay marriage as a wedge issue to keep her father in the White House.

Even though she is in a long-term relationship with her partner, she didn’t speak up when her father’s boss told the world that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

But now that she has a new book to peddle, she’s finally ready to speak up.

After years of staying silent under constant criticism, it should come as no surprise that Cheney takes off her gloves to fight back.

But just who is she fighting? Not against the Republicans who spearheaded gay marriage as a wedge issue. Not the party strategists who worked hand in hand with the religious right to exploit homosexuality as an “evil perversion.”

And she’s certainly not fighting back against her famous and powerful father or his even more powerful boss. Instead, she’s taking on John Kerry and John Edwards, the Democratic presidential ticket from 2004, for calling her what she must consider a bad name: “lesbian.”

IN THE CATEGORY of gay people I don’t understand, Mary Cheney has now leapfrogged near the top of the list.

She has some prominent gay supporters. Elizabeth Birch, the former leader of the Human Rights Campaign, penned a Washington Post op-ed with Hilary Rosen, former CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, that described Cheney’s book tour as a “teachable moment” that “has the potential to be a transforming moment for all Americans.”

I wish I could be as optimistic.

Cheney’s book, “Now It’s My Turn: A Daughter’s Chronicle of Political Life,” devotes page after page to her anger and dislike of John Kerry and John Edwards, but a scant few paragraphs about her “coming out.”

She is more interested in making excuses than finding fault with her father, whose administration is pushing the most anti-gay federal legislative agenda in recent history.

Although Mary Cheney differs publicly with President Bush on the Federal Marriage Amendment, she reserves most of her criticism for the other party. That would be the party that does not control the White House, the Congress or the Supreme Court.

So why is she so upset about the Democrats? Because Senators Kerry and Edwards said nice things during the presidential debates about her being gay. That makes Edwards a “complete and total slime” in Mary Cheney’s book, and Kerry a “son of a bitch.”

Does that make any sense? Or does it sound like someone hasn’t yet reconciled her sexual orientation with her politics?

IT’S HARD TO take Mary Cheney seriously as anything more than an openly gay flak for the GOP, especially when she defies commentators from all parts of the spectrum by saying, “I think [Bush and Cheney] have done the exact right thing in Iraq.”

I don’t expect her to attack her own father, or to criticize the mother who once denied she was a lesbian, but neither do I expect her to harbor resentment because someone said she is gay.

I admire and respect Elizabeth Birch and Hilary Rosen, and I think they may be right that this could be a teachable moment for America. But Mary Cheney is the wrong person at the wrong time to get that message across.