The gay marriage movement has found an unexpected friend in former Vice President Dick Cheney, who took a break from touting the success of Bush interrogation policies to voice support for equal marriage rights.

During a speech at the National Press Club for the Gerald R. Ford Foundation journalism awards, the suddenly outspoken Cheney said that he supports gay marriage but only if it is regulated by states. Cheney said (via The Huffington Post):

As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don’t support…It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. … But I don’t have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that.

This is not the first time that Cheney has spoken out in support of equal marriage rights. During his 2004 re-election campaign, then-Vice President Cheney broke from President Bush’s call for a Constitutional ban on gay marriage at a campaign stop in Iowa, which has since become the third state to legalize gay marriage. Markedly, neither Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) or his running-mate Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) supported gay marriage in that election.

Cheney’s vocal support of marriage rights comes as the GOP grapples to come to a unified position on gay marriage. While the religious right remains ardently opposed to same-sex marriage, there is growing support for gay marriage rights among Republicans. Last week, Theodore Olson, President Bush’s lead lawyer in his 2000 Supreme Court fight for the presidency, joined forces with Gore’s lead attorney to argue that Prop. 8 be overturned in Federal Court.

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