EVERY TIME I hear something new about Alan Keyes, I shake my head in disbelief. Keyes is the Republican running for the U.S. Senate from Illinois — well, he’s limping for Senate.

There’s no way he’s going to win against the powerhouse Democrat Barack Obama. And that’s a good thing.

A few weeks ago, I saw a truck trolling though one of Chicago’s working class neighborhoods. It seemed to be an advertisement from the Keyes campaign, extolling Keyes and condemning Obama as anti-family — because he is not anti-gay.

This reminded me of Keyes’ remarks in late August, when he said that homosexuality was based “on the premise of selfish hedonism,” because gay and lesbian couples can’t have children except through adoption or insemination.

Asked if that meant Keyes would call Mary Cheney a selfish hedonist, Keyes replied, “Of course she is. That goes by definition. Of course she is.”

Mary Cheney is a selfish hedonist because she’s a lesbian.

NOW IT TURNS out that Keyes’ daughter might be — hold your breath — a lesbian. Why am I not surprised?

We usually take it for granted that the more vociferously someone is against us, the more likely it is that they are hiding something. So that Keyes might have a lesbian in his immediate family makes perfect sense.

But this is what I don’t understand: Maya has deferred her admission to Brown University so she can help her father’s campaign. After some initial publicity, the blog where she ruminated about her girlfriend has been stripped of most lesbian references. And she has maintained a public silence.

She is working on the campaign of someone who has basically called her and her girlfriend “selfish hedonists” because they are in love. What makes it more complicated, of course, is that this “someone” is her father.

This might remind you a bit of Mary Cheney. Mary has been working behind the scenes for the Bush/Cheney campaign, even though the Bush administration has made it clear that it would be very, very happy if we would all just disappear.

Dick Cheney, at least, has semi-supported his daughter in public, making it clear that he is not opposed to civil unions. And Maya is very young. She’s just 19, so perhaps she is just exploring being a lesbian, not committing to it.

Still, there is something disturbing about how these women are willing to submerge an essential part of themselves to work for politicians who are actively trying to dismantle their civil rights.

THEY ARE NOT alone, of course. There are scores of gay staffers in Washington, D.C. who work for the Republican National Committee, or for anti-gay Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Mary and Maya just happen to have caught the brunt of the publicity, since the anti-gay Republicans they work for are in the family.

This makes me think that maybe National Coming Out Day, Oct. 11, needs a second component, now that our movement is maturing. It isn’t good enough to kick down your own closet door if you then help to shove your brothers and sisters back into the suffocating darkness.

Coming out is a long, hard process and can’t be done on a schedule. But once you’ve dealt with being gay, it is unacceptable to actively work against your community.

In fact, if you work against your community, I’m not sure you can call yourself gay. “Gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual” and “queer” are political identities, not just personal and cultural identities.

If you work against your own people, you may still be homosexual, but gay? No. We don’t want you.

Working against your own community is betrayal of the most intimate kind. It is betraying those before you who fought for your rights. And it is betraying yourself. It is saying that you think so little of yourself that you are willing to let an essential part of your identity be trampled on just for approval, prestige or power.