Watch: Even with a Gay Sister, Liz Cheney Still Has a 'Zero' Rating on LGBTQ Rights

Kate McKinnon nailed Liz Cheney on "Saturday Night Live" this past weekend, and in doing so touched upon the bizarre embrace of the strongly conservative Wyoming lawmaker by leftist media following her losing her Republican committee chairmanship last week.

"I fell down to hell like Lil Nas X, fracked with the devil, and bounced back up onto MSNBC," she said. "Colin, the Republican Party is changing. I don't know what happened. I don't know what I did wrong. Look at me, I'm everything a conservative woman is supposed to be – blond, mean," the Washington Post reported.

"I opposed gay marriage," McKinnon's Cheney said, adding that she once loved Trump "like a straight sister." This, the Post added, despite the fact her sister Mary is gay.

"Like Republicans Mitt Romney and John Bolton before her, Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has discovered the secret of how to transition from being a whipping boy of the Washington press corps to its paragon of rectitude: Simply side with Democrats and against the Republican majority on some issue of substance," wrote Politico.

It appears that the liberal media has taken Cheney's side in the fight to return the GOP to the party of just the mean Republicans, not the crazy, mean Republicans. In other words, the fact that she shares with liberals a dislike for Trump shouldn't grant her a pass on her past record. As Jack Hunter put it on Spectator.com in February, "But this is still Liz Cheney: One of Washington's most high profile and influential neoconservatives, the sworn enemies of peace lovers and civil libertarians of any stripe. War. Torture. Drone strikes. Black sites. PATRIOT Act. Gitmo. Mass surveillance. Her dad. She's your gal."

And he didn't even mention LGBTQ issues, for which Cheney receives a 0 rating with the Human Rights Campaign. Rated on 15 legislative initiatives that affect LGBTQ people, Cheney rated 0 on each except the Equality Act, which wasn't rated. Click here to see her results and where she places against other legislators.

Cheney's position on LGBTQ issues made headlines in 2018 when Adam McKay's biopic of her father, "Vice," was released. One of the film's most powerful scenes has Mary Cheney "sobbing on the phone to her parents after her older sister has publicly rejected her marriage to her longtime partner, a woman," wrote People Magazine in 2019.

The Cheney sisters were tight prior to their rift over LGBTQ issues. "We were as close as sisters can be," Mary recalled in her 2006 memoir, "Now It's My Turn," People Magazine wrote. Mary had come out to her family while in high school and was accepted by her parents, though her mother was concerned by what hardships being gay would bring her daughter. Her father, former VP Dick Cheney, "mastered a tricky balancing act. A leading Republican at a time when the party was campaigning on forbidding gay marriage, he voiced support for Mary, who was then in a longterm relationship with her later wife, Heather Poe."

Cheney even disagreed with George Bush during his 2004 re-election campaign when the then President pushed a move to codify an anti-gay marriage amendment into the Constitution. "Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue our family is very familiar with," he explained to supporters at a campaign rally in Iowa, adding, "With the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone. People ... ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to."

In 2009 Mary Cheney met Heather Poe. Three years later, they married in a union approved of by Cheney's parents, who sent them a congratulatory note that read in part: "Mary and Heather have been in a committed relationship for many years, and we are delighted that they were able to take advantage of the opportunity to have that relationship recognized.

"Mary and Heather and their children are very important and much loved members of our family and we wish them every happiness."

Not in attendance at the ceremony was Liz Cheney. But what led to the rift between the sisters came a year later, when Liz was running for senate against incumbent Mike Enzi. During the campaign, Politico reported, Cheney was attacked for supposedly supporting marriage equality. "The attacks had forced Liz's hand, and she had promptly issued a statement opposing gay marriage." She posted a statement, another Politico story reported, that read: "I am strongly pro-life and I am not pro-gay marriage."

The statement added: "I believe the issue of marriage must be decided by the states, and by the people in the states, not by judges and not even by legislators, but by the people themselves."

Mary struck back on Facebook. "Liz's position is to treat my family as second class citizens," Mary wrote. "This isn't like a disagreement over grazing fees or what to do about Iran." Her parents issued a statement supporting Liz, but Mary wasn't finished. "I'm not supporting Liz's candidacy," she wrote. "By supporting, I mean not working, not contributing, and not voting for (I'm registered in Virginia not Wyoming)." The best she could say of the sister who was once her close friend and confidante was a final postscript: " 'I am not saying I hope she loses to Enzi,' " added Politico.

When Liz appeared on Fox News in November, 2013, she said: " 'I love Mary very much, I love her family very much. This is just an issue on which we disagree,' " People Magazine reported.

"Mary and Poe, watching the episode from their home in Northern Virginia, were moved to respond. 'Liz – this isn't just an issue on which we disagree, you're just wrong – and on the wrong side of history,' Mary wrote on Facebook."

Poe added her feelings to her sister-in-law: "Liz has been a guest in our home, has spent time and shared holidays with our children. To have her now say she doesn't support our right to marry is offensive to say the least. I can't help but wonder how Liz would feel if, as she moved from state to state, she discovered that her family was protected in one but not the other."

Whether there has been a thaw in the relationship between Mary and Liz isn't known. In 2016 when asked by the Washington Post if their relationship had mended, Mary said, "I don't have to answer that."