Vice President Dick Cheney is a grandfather for the sixth time.
According to the vice president's office, Cheney's daughter, Mary Cheney, 37, and her longtime partner, Heather Poe, welcomed 8 lbs., 6 oz. Samuel David Cheney into the world at 9:46 a.m. Wednesday at Sibley Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Cheney's pregnancy caused some stir with conservatives, including James Dobson, chairman of the Focus on the Family lobbying group, when it was disclosed last December.
“We should not enter into yet another untested and far-reaching social experiment, this one driven by the desires of same-sex couples to bear and raise children,” Dobson said at the time on the organization’s Web site. However, he said his position was not meant to “harm or insult women such as Cheney and Poe.”
Presidential aid
President Bush came to the couple's support shortly after, telling People magazine, "I think Mary is going to be a loving soul to her child. And I’m happy for her.”
In a 2005 interview with The New York Times, Bush said: “I believe children can receive love from gay couples but the ideal is — and studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman.”
He sidestepped the issue when questioned by People magazine about whether he still held that belief.
“Mary Cheney is going to make a fine mom and she’s going to love this child a lot,” he said, according to an excerpt from the interview.
During the 2004 campaign, Mary Cheney served as a key aide to her father.
Bush has supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages but Congress failed to pass it. The vice president’s daughter opposed the measure.