Mary Cheney is missing: Amid a nationwide debate over marriage, the vice president's lesbian daughter remains silent. Activists are increasing pressure on her to speak out as other gay children of marriage opponents have already done.

The vice president's rambling Victorian mansion in Washington, D.C. may be placed far behind a security fence. But oh, to be a fly on the wall of recent dinnertime discussions between Vice President Dick Cheney; his wife, Lynne; and their lesbian daughter, Mary. What on earth do they talk about now that gay men and lesbians have begun marrying across the country? After all, on the subject of same-sex unions, the opinions of the Cheney family--which includes another daughter, Elizabeth, and three grandchildren--seem as murky and as changeable as the waters of the Potomac.

Mary, once a high-profile gay community liaison for file Coors Brewing Co., has dissolved into Washington's shadows of sensible heels and blazers. She is barely seen in public, and anyone who knows her appears to have taken a vow of silence. Yet she has a very public role as director of vice presidential operations for the Bush-Cheney reelection effort, making a reported $100,000 a year. The campaign has fired up its conservative base by opposing equal marriage rights for gays. This is where the Cheney family ambiguity begins, since Dick Cheney said explicitly during the 2000 campaign that the definition of marriage should be left to the states. On Match 2, however, he changed Iris position, after President George W. Bush announced his firm support for a proposed amendment to file U.S. Constitution that would forever ban same-sex marriage and appears to threaten even civil unions or domestic-partner benefits. The vice president and his wife say often that they love both their daughters. Why then, activists ask, does Dad support daughter Elizabeth's marriage while working to deny the same rights to daughter Mary?

Mary Cheney has not made a public statement on gay and lesbian equality in years since 2002, when she joined the pro-gay Republican Unity Coalition--let alone taken a public stance on the Federal Marriage Amendment. "Some people I've talked to who know her say she must be torn apart," says Washington political consultant John Aravosis. "Other people are saying, 'That's Mary. She's ml ultraconservative like her father, and she doesn't time there's anything wrong with what she's doing.'"

Aravosis help start the Web site Dear-Mary.com in February in an effort to pressure. Cheney to take a stand. The site provides a chance for readers to write their own letters to Mary Cheney. Some are nasty. Some are kind. "There are a lot of masons why gay people work for bad people," says Aravosis, who also co-founded the StopDrLaura.com Web site. "Sometimes they're torn apart. Sometimes they're A-OK."

With the exception of a close inner circle--who aren't talking--few know what Mary Cheney really thinks these days. Jennifer Millerwise, a spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, declined to comment to The Advocate. Phone calls about Cheney to the Republican Unity Coalition and the gay political group Log Cabin Republicans were not returned. A friend of Mary Cheney's from her time with Coors said he didn't want to comment. It's difficult to confirm even that Cheney is still living in Conifer, Colo., with her longtime partner, Heather Poe, 42, file girlfriend who accompanied her to the 2000 Republican national convention and to inauguration events in 2001. A repeat performance--the daughter of the vice president bringing a same-sex partner in front of saturation media coverage--seems unlikely during this year's Republican convention, to be held in New York City August 30-September 2.

Mary Cheney has effectively placed herself in an undisclosed location.

Elizabeth Birch, the former executive director of the Human Rights Campaign and now a Washington consultant, has met Mary Cheney on occasion and describes her as bright, dynamic, and professional. "Most of my anger is directed at the vice president," Birch says. "In a sense, all of us get caught in very difficult family choices, but she does have a choice if she participates in propping up this administration. I think if Mary was not actively supporting his candidacy that it would be less acceptable for people to sort of use her as a vehicle for their feelings."

When Dick Cheney took office, it appeared his daughter would become more outspoken on gay equality. When she joined the Republican Unity Coalition in 2002, she said, "Working together, we can expand the Republican Party's outreach to nontraditional Republicans. We tan make sexual orientation a non-issue for the Republican Party, and we can help achieve equality for all gay and lesbian Americans." One year later--as the Bush administration geared up for its reelection campaign--she had quit the group without comment.

Given Dick Cheney's past statements and Lynne Cheney's past fiction writing, it appears Mom and Dad may be just fine with Mary's sexuality. After all, Lynne Cheney in 1981 authored the novel Sisters, which includes hot-to-trot lesbian sex scenes in the Old West. One passage: "She saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her. How strong it made them. What comfort it gave." Yet Lynne Cheney snapped at ABC's Cokie Roberts in 2000 when she was asked to comment on the fact that Mary is gay, claiming such matters were private--even though privacy has never stopped the Cheneys from talking about Elizabeth's husband and children.

Are the Cheneys so craven that they'd betray in public a daughter whom they adore in private? Aravosis thinks so. "We want America to know that this is an administration that will sell out its own family in the name of family values. It is despicable," he says. So far, DearMary.com has collected 23,000 letters from people demanding, pleading, that Mary Cheney once and for all address the issues that continue to follow her. The site has also received $25,000 in donated advertising space in newspapers and on Web sites: One popular print ad depicts Mary Cheney on a milk carton, presented as a missing child.

Aravosis says he knows many gay men and lesbians are shocked to learn of Mary Cheney's critical role in the 2004 election: "People think she's Chelsea Clinton, 13 years old, at home, braiding her hair. But she's a 34-year-old woman running the vice president's reelection campaign who is an open lesbian. There's a problem."

In case Mary Cheney is in search of a model for how a conservative politician's gay child can publicly disagree with Dad in a civil manner, she need look no further than California. On Match 9 in San Francisco, the son of William J. "Pete" Knight--the state's most prominent opponent of gay rights and author of the 2000 ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage there--exchanged vows with his longtime boyfriend. David J. Knight, 42, married his partner of 10 years, Joseph J. Lazzaro, 39, in the rotunda of San Francisco's City Hall, before returning home to Baltimore. Senator Knight issued a statement: "I love my son, but we continue to disagree on this issue, and because this is a personal family matter, I do not wish to respond." He said the marriages performed in San Francisco were "unethical" and "illegal."

David Knight tens The Advocate he loves his father and misses him but that he isn't going to change for him. "It's a shame that we can't at least discuss and maintain a relationship where we disagree, which a lot of their kids and parents do," he says. "It just doesn't look like that's going to happen with us. And it's OK. There's a loss--I won't deny that--and there's pain, but it's OK.

"I think it's important for people to not look at this as some tragic family situation," Knight says. "I think it'd be better if they looked at it in the light of 'It's OK to disagree with your parents.' If there is a loss there, I think it's OK if you're being true to yourself and trying to make yourself happy."

Bob Witeck, a Washington public relations expert who once counted Mary Cheney as a friend, says she should look at the example set forth by Chrissy Gephardt, the openly lesbian daughter of Missouri congressman Dick Gephardt. The former Democratic presidential nominee says he does not support gay marriage; his daughter does. "They had an openness about talking about it that was positive," Witeck says. "I would hope that Mary Cheney--whether she says anything in public about it--would tell her family how important her relationship is and that forever codifying [a ban on] it in the Constitution would be a disaster. It's distressing to see that we don't have any evidence of that, and that's a shame."

For her part, Gephardt tells The Advocate that the Dear Mary Web site is "harsh" and she is willing to give Cheney the benefit of the doubt Gephardt, who was married to a man before she met her current partner, Amy Loder, remembers years of being petrified of coming out and having the spotlight turned on her and her father. She finally got enough courage to tell her mother and father in April 2001 at a St. Louis restaurant. By the time Dick Gephardt's presidential bid was in full swing in 2003, Chrissy, a former social worker, was speaking to crowds at rallies about being gay.

"I don't know what Mary is experiencing. I don't know what her life is like," she says. "Of course, I would like her to come out and say something. But I also don't understand what she lives with every day. So ifs hard for me to sit here and say 'How date she' when it could be risking a family rift or her parents never speaking to her again. I know how important it is to have the love and support of family.

"I don't think we should be attacking Mary. I think we should be attacking George Bush and Dick Cheney."

A few years ago Los Angeles filmmaker Arthur Dong set out to make a film that asked the question, What happens when well-known, conservative parents have children who are gay? The result was 2002's Family Fundamentals. Through a close friend, Dong attempted to interview the Cheneys for that film, but he never received a response. "In my experience with other families, although they often even may be activists for the gay community, when it comes to discussing family matters, that's a little touchy," he says.

Yet DearMary.com is gaining popularity and continues to pose something of a public relations problem for the Cheney camp. In one letter a woman named Olivia from Santa Ana, Calif., pleads with Cheney to speak to her father. "I, am sorry that the burden of our community falls upon you, but you are the one of us who has the best chance to make a difference. Your work with Coors proves your commitment to our cause ... you cannot possibly wish this federally sanctioned hate on yourself and your partner."

Gephardt even counters the often-repeated Cheney family argument that it's nobody's business. "I have found that by being public, I have more of my privacy than you would imagine," she says. "The cards are on the table; there's nothing to hide." On the other hand, she adds, Mary Cheney knows she has painted herself into an isolated corner. "I go to a gay and lesbian bar here in D.C., people will know who I am," Gephardt says. "Ifs always like 'Oh' and 'Whatever, we know your story.' But mine's also a positive story for the community. I could see for her people coming up and saying nasty things about her father and about her. That's tough."

But until Mary Cheney decides to speak for herself, gay men and lesbians will continue to fill in the silence.