Mary Cheney Takes a Job at AOL

After stumping for her father's vice presidential campaign last year, Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Dick Cheney, has returned to the private sector with a content programming position at AOL. Cheney will be working under AOL vice chairman Ted Leonsis, who leads the company's Audience Business, a marketing division of the Internet behemoth that seeks to grow AOL's Internet audience via Web-based programming and products such as MapQuest.com and MovieFone.com.

"AOL is thrilled that Mary Cheney is joining us in a position where she'll be reporting to Ted Leonsis," AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham told Advocate.com.

AOL is owned by the world's largest media company, Time Warner, known for gay-friendly practices. Time Warner offers workplace protections for gay and lesbian employees as well as providing benefits for same-sex domestic partners equal to those for heterosexual married couples.

Cheney's new job comes after the March announcement that she sold Simon and Schuster the rights to a memoir for an advance of about $1 million. The book is expected in May 2006.

Prior to serving as an aide to her father and becoming fodder in the national debate over same-sex marriage in the 2004 election, Cheney was a corporate relations manager at Coors Brewing Co. In that position she provided outreach to gays and lesbians who had turned from Coors because of the company's right-wing policies in the 1970s, which included funneling money to antigay causes. (Neal Broverman, Advocate.com)