A family feud over a deeply personal issue is playing out in a very public way.
In a Facebook post Friday evening, Mary Cheney hit back against her sister Liz, a Wyoming Senate hopeful, for her opposition to same-sex marriage, the New York Times reports.
“For the record, I love my sister, but she is dead wrong on this issue of marriage,” said Mary Cheney, who is openly gay and married to her longtime partner. They have two children together.
“Freedom means freedom for everyone,” she continued. (Her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, said the same thing in 2009 when he announced his support for legalizing marriage equality on a state-by-state basis.) “That means that all families—regardless of how they look or how they are made—all families are entitled to the same rights, privileges and protection as every other.”
Liz Cheney had said earlier on Friday that she was “not pro-gay marriage” in response to a push poll asking voters if they knew Cheney “supports abortion and aggressively promotes gay marriage.” Cheney clarified, saying she was “strongly pro-life,” and that she believed “the issue of marriage must be decided by the states, and by the people in the states, not by judges and not even by legislators, but by the people themselves.”
Her opponent, incumbent Republican Sen. Mike Enzi, who also opposes same-sex marriage, denied involvement with the poll.
Mary Cheney rejected her sister’s position that marriage should be decided by the states. “It’s not something to be decided by a show of hands,” she wrote. “Please like and share if you agree.”
Wyoming is one of 35 states that limits marriage to unions between a man and a woman. Earlier this year, the state House rejected a measure that would have allowed gay couples in Wyoming to create domestic partnerships, entitling them to most of the legal rights given to heterosexual spouses.
Emma Margolin
Emma Margolin is a reporter at MSNBC.com.