Have you seen Mary Cheney? Because we’re trying to find her.

By we I mean the gay community. You see, Mary is Vice President Dick Cheney’s openly gay daughter. She campaigned vigorously for her father during the 2000 election and promised to fight to make sexual orientation a “non issue” for the Republican Party.

But though her father now supports President Bush and a constitutional amendment that would make her a second-class citizen, Mary has been conspicuously absent from gay rights rallies, acts of civil disobedience in San Francisco and Indigo Girls concerts. We haven’t heard one peep out of her little lesbian mouth.

But not for lack of trying.

DearMary.com is a Web site devoted to open letters to Ms. Cheney, urging her to stand up and let her voice be heard. Inspired by a New York Press column by Michelangelo Signorile, the site is the brainchild of John Aravosis and Robin Tyler, the two activists who forced Dr. Laura Schlessinger off TV airwaves.

The site is also seeking donations to launch a nationwide ad campaign featuring Mary’s face on a milk carton. I donated $50.

Although history Lecturer Lane Fenrich doesn’t believe the campaign will be acknowledged by Mary or her father, he said he feels it helps draw attention to gay rights issues.

“Bush and company can only succeed to the extent that they are allowed to talk about abstractions rather than people, about marriage rather than Mary,” he said.

But although gay rights activists might think this is a fabulous way of personalizing the issue, some people think the attacks are too personal. Medill junior Henry Bowles, a member of College Republicans, doesn’t agree with DearMary.com’s tactics.

“Many homosexuals do not choose to pursue a political agenda to gain special rights and privileges based on their sexual preferences,” said Bowles, a Daily ad representative. “Mary Cheney can probably be counted among these.”

He predicts that “efforts to woo Mary Cheney by homosexual activists will be in vain.”

I would argue that all openly gay people are “homosexual activists” — even if they don’t have a rainbow flag bumper sticker or a crush on San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. By publicly acknowledging their sexuality, they are creating a level of acceptance around them.

In the past Mary was a tried and true activist. She preached her father’s “compassionate conservatism” to gay rights groups and served as a board member of the gay rights group Republican Unity Coalition.

But now she’s in hiding, watching “The L Word” and earning $100,000 a year running her father’s re-election campaign. Even if Mary doesn’t acknowledge DearMary.com, the site has achieved its goal of personalizing the issue of gay rights in the Republican Party.

She might not have flown to San Francisco last week, but she still deserves the right to walk down the aisle.