WASHINGTON — Mary Cheney, the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, is expecting a baby with her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, Cheney's office said Wednesday.
Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, said the vice president and his wife, Lynne, were "looking forward with eager anticipation" to the baby's birth, which is expected this spring and will bring to six the number of grandchildren for the Cheneys.
Cheney's office would not provide details about how Mary Cheney became pregnant or by whom, and Mary Cheney did not respond to messages left at her office and with her book publisher, Simon & Schuster.
The announcement of Mary Cheney's pregnancy, which was first reported on Wednesday by The Washington Post, prompted new debate over the administration's opposition to gay marriage.
Family Pride, a gay rights group, noted that Mary Cheney's home state of Virginia does not recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions to same-sex couples.
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"The news of Mary Cheney's pregnancy exemplifies, once again, how the best interests of children are denied when lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens are treated unfairly and accorded different and unequal rights and responsibilities than other parents," the group's executive director, Jennifer Chrisler, said in a statement.
Focus on the Family, a Christian group that has provided crucial political support to President Bush, released a statement that criticized child rearing by same-sex couples.
In 2004, Mary Cheney worked on the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, which won in part because of the so-called values voters who were drawn to the polls by ballot measures seeking to ban same-sex marriage.
Bush that year voiced strong approval for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, as he did this year, too. While gay-rights groups called on Mary Cheney to speak out against the proposed ban in 2004, she remained silent.
But Mary Cheney wrote in a book published earlier this year that she had considered resigning from the campaign after learning Bush would endorse the proposed amendment. She wrote that her father talked her into staying, arguing that other important issues were at stake in the campaign.
