George W. Bush (right) with Dick Cheney

Washington, Feb. 25 (Reuters): US President George W. Bush’s decision yesterday to back a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage may put his Vice-President in a tough spot.

Vice-President Dick Cheney’s daughter, Mary, who works for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, is openly gay. Cheney made comments in 2000 during a nationally televised debate that seemed to support leaving the matter to the states.

“The fact of the matter is we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody,” Cheney said in a debate against Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, who was Democrat Al Gore’s vice-presidential running mate in the 2000 campaign.

“And I think that means that people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It’s really no one else’s business in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behaviour in that regard.”

On the question of “whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction” of such relationships, Cheney said, “I don’t think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area.”

More recently, however, Cheney seemed to shift from that view, saying in a January 11 interview with the Denver Post that Bush was the one who would decide administration policy on the issue and “I will support whatever decision he makes.”

Cheney’s spokesman, Kevin Kellems, was unavailable yesterday to clarify the Vice-President’s views on the issue.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, asked if Bush had discussed his decision with Cheney, said only that Cheney was “very well aware of the decisions the President makes.”

A defiant San Francisco mayor, who has allowed thousands of gays to marry in the past 12 days, blasted Bush’s call for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage as “shameful.”

A legal fight also loomed as California’s attorney general said he would ask the state’s top court later this week to bar San Francisco from performing gay weddings.