President George W. Bush says he is happy for Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, Mary, who is expecting a child with her partner, Heather Poe.

In an exclusive year-end interview, the President told People that despite his opposition to gay marriage, he’s happy for the Vice President and his daughter.

“The Vice President took me aside and gave me the good news. He and his wife, Lynne, are very happy for Mary,” Bush said.

In 2005, Bush said that “ideally, a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman.” Ballot initiatives banning gay marriage in several key states played a major role in securing his re-election bid in 2004.

Asked if he still felt that way, knowing Mary Cheney and her partner, he said:

“I think Mary is going to be a loving soul to her child. And I’m happy for her.”

Mary Cheney, 37, and Poe, 45, have been together for 15 years and are expecting their first child late in the spring. Cheney’s other daughter, Elizabeth, has five children.

Although Mary Cheney was a key aide on her father’s 2004 campaign, she has said she disagrees with Bush’s stance on gay marriage. Dick Cheney voiced his difference of opinion as well, but stated matter-of-factly that Bush sets the policy for the administration.

“I am in favor of legalized same sex marriage,” Mary Cheney said. “But in the campaign, I had no doubt, even with that disagreement, that President Bush was the absolute best person to be leading us at this time in our country’s history.”

Mary Cheney’s sexual orientation has, understandably, become a sticking point in a decade in which gay rights have risen to the forefront of public debate. In 2002, she joined the gay-friendly Republican Unity Coalition and said that sexual orientation should be “a non-issue for the Republican Party”, with a goal of “equality for all gay and lesbian Americans.”

The organization soon vanished after the 2004 election, however, and Mary resigned from the RUC’s board in July 2003 to become the director of vice presidential operations for the Bush-Cheney 2004 Presidential re-election campaign.

In 2004, the Bush administration supported the Federal Marriage Amendment, a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have limited marriage to heterosexuals and also banned civil unions and domestic partnership benefits. Some pundits believe the bill, which had little chance of passing Congress, was an appeal to the party’s conservative base.

Mary Cheney did not publicly express her view until her autobiography, Now It’s My Turn, where she stated her opposition to the amendment, yet felt it important, nevertheless, to support the president’s re-election bid as she felt only he was capable of protecting the country from terrorist attacks.