A new Internet ad campaign launched Monday targets U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter Mary and her silence about the Bush administration's support for the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

The ads, which will run on WashingtonPost.com, the Onion and liberal political blogs, feature animated stick figures of the two Cheneys. The caption in one of the frames says: "Dick's daughter sold out to help Dick run again."

The Web spot focuses on Cheney's role as a director in the Bush-Cheney campaign and notes that she is less visible in the 2004 campaign than in 2000, when she helped the Republican Party recruit gay and lesbian voters. This year she has kept a low profile and has not spoken in public since the Bush administration backed the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) in February.

"They've clearly made the decision to keep her in the closet for this campaign," activist John Aravosis told the Associated Press.

Earlier this year, Aravosis and Robin Tyler started the Mary Cheney-themed Web site DearMary.com, on which site visitors can post open letters to Cheney.

"You might not feel that it is your business to tell the Vice President of the country what to do," wrote "Olivia" from Santa Ana, Calif., in one of the postings, "but please speak to your father and tell him to stand by his prior conviction that same-sex marriage is an issue best decided by the states individually. You know that putting discrimination into the United States Constitution is reprehensible."

The Web site and ad campaign are projects of DontAmend.com and the Equality Campaign Inc., a national effort to stop any amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would ban marriage for GLBT people.

According to the AP, the communications director for the Bush re-election campaign, Nicole Devenish, dismissed the ads as an attack on a candidate's child.

The ad campaign was announced days after Republican leaders in the Senate scheduled a full vote on the FMA for the week of July 12.

Aravosis said his site raised $23,000 for the ads, which will run until the end of the week.

"I hope the ads will show the American people what a hypocrite Dick Cheney is for selling out his own daughter in the name of 'family values,'" Aravosis told the PlanetOut Network. "They wanted a national debate about family values, and we're going to give them one -- about their own family values."

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