Alan Keyes kicks Ivy League daughter out of the house for being gay.

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Irvine511

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how utterly heartbreaking, it almost brought me to tears. i want to find this girl and give her a huge hug.



When Sexuality Undercuts A Family's Ties

By Marc Fisher

Washington Post, Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page C01


Maya Keyes loves her father and mother. She put off college and moved from the family home in Darnestown to Chicago to be with her dad on a grand adventure. Even though she disagrees with him on "almost everything" political, she worked hard for his quixotic and losing campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Now Maya Keyes -- liberal, lesbian and a little lost -- finds herself out on her own. She says her parents -- conservative commentator and perennial candidate Alan Keyes and his wife, Jocelyn -- threw her out of their house, refused to pay her college tuition and stopped speaking to her.

Maya, 19, says her parents cut her off because of who she is -- "a liberal queer." Tomorrow, she will take her private dispute with her dad into the open. She is scheduled to make her debut as a political animal, speaking at a rally in Annapolis sponsored by Equality Maryland, the state's gay rights lobby.

She plans to talk about "what it was like for me growing up as a liberal queer in a very conservative household. I've known so many other people in a position like mine, where their families really don't want much to do with them. Maybe I can help by talking about it."

During his failed campaign last fall against Barack Obama (D) for the Illinois Senate seat, Alan Keyes lashed out at Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Cheney. Keyes told a radio interviewer that Mary Cheney was a "selfish hedonist." Then, without having been asked anything about his own family, he volunteered that "if my daughter were a lesbian, I'd look at her and say, 'That is a relationship that is based on selfish hedonism.' I would also tell my daughter that it's a sin and she needs to pray to the Lord God to help her deal with that sin."

Maya heard the comments and recoiled. "It was kind of strange that he said it like a hypothetical," she says. "It was really kind of unpleasant."

Alan Keyes (R) has made a career as a controversialist, an eloquent and passionate defender of traditional values and conservative thinking. He has run for the Senate three times and the presidency twice. Like his daughter, he took time away from education because of his politics, leaving Cornell University as a freshman after getting into a heated dispute with black students who had taken over the student center.

Maya is also an eloquent iconoclast, at once an adult and an adolescent, testing society's limits even as she expects her parents to give her the love and support they always have provided.

Her parents have known that Maya is a lesbian since they found a copy of the Washington Blade, the gay weekly, in her room and confronted her at the end of high school (she went to Oakcrest School for Girls, a Catholic school in McLean run by the church's highly devout Opus Dei movement.) Ever since, Maya says, her parents have told her that her sexuality is wrong and sinful.

"As long as I was quiet about being gay or my politics, we got along," she says. "Then I went to the Counterinaugural," last month's protests in Washington against President Bush. "My father didn't like that."

Maya returned from the demonstration to find that she had been let go from her job at her father's political organization.

She says she was told to leave her father's apartment and not to expect any money toward attending Brown University, where she was admitted but deferred matriculation to spend a year teaching in southern India. "In my father's view, financing my college would be financing my politics, in a sense," Maya says, "because I plan to be an activist after college."

She wrote to her parents to tell them about tomorrow's speech, but says she got no response.

After I contacted Alan Keyes's office, press secretary Connie Hair called back with a prepared statement from him: "My daughter is an adult, and she is responsible for her own actions. What she chooses to do has nothing to do with my work or political activities." End of statement.

Maya, too, has had her testy moments, which she has shared on the Internet. "Sometimes I cannot believe I am related to this man," she wrote in her online diary last fall. "Haha though I'm sure he feels the same way about me."

In another passage, she wrote of her parents: "I'm all about working for global justice. THEY don't care about that. THEY only care that I am an evil dyke."

Maya is more conflicted than her online rants might indicate. She shares some of her dad's political and religious foundations. She is religious and deeply opposes abortion, viewing it as the taking of life.

Still, when I asked Maya whether she is glad her father lost the election, she stopped short. "Should you really be asking that question? I mean, I suppose there is a conflict, but I'm not sure I wanted him to lose. I disagree with nearly all his views, but he's very honest and has a lot of integrity."

If she could talk to her parents now, she would tell them she does not intend to hurt them by going public. "I wish the fact that I was gay was not something that would hurt them either," she says. "It wasn't anything they did that made me this way. I really don't see why what I think should affect him in any way."

During the campaign, other bloggers discovered Maya's Web site and the electronic gossip flew for a while, but her sexuality was barely mentioned in the campaign or the corporate media.

The end of the campaign brought no respite from the tensions at home. Two weeks ago, her parents said she would have to make her own way. "After all the arguments and tensions over the years, I always hoped it would never actually get to this point," Maya wrote, "although I suppose given our vastly divergent political beliefs, it was inevitable."

But her friends told her no, there was nothing remotely inevitable about the break, that political differences and even sexual orientation ought not result in being kicked out. Maya wrote: "They say most parents would be thrilled to have a child who doesn't smoke, have sex, do drugs, hardly drinks. . . , does well in school, gets good grades, gets into the Ivy League. . . , goes regularly to church, spends free time mentoring kids."

Maya still sounds more sad than angry about her situation. "I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt my father," she says. Like other gay relatives of prominent conservatives, she has struggled with how public to be about her sexuality. Like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's sister Candace, who campaigned for John Kerry on behalf of a gay rights group, Maya says she has come to believe that "while we might be trading on our prominence, it's a good thing to do something good with our situation, and anyway, we didn't choose to be queer."

Maya is looking for work, planning to move in with friends in Washington or a brother in Boston. She hopes to get back in touch with her mom and dad.

On Thursday, the Point Foundation, a San Francisco-based charity that provides scholarships to students "who have been marginalized because of their sexual orientation," decided to pay Maya's expenses so she can begin her studies at Brown. "Many of the students we support have been disowned by their families because they've been honest about who they are," said the foundation's executive director, Vance Lancaster. "Maya's situation is especially poignant because of her father's position, but it's a situation that happens every day to hundreds of kids across the country." This year, Point has received more than 1,200 applications for about 40 scholarships.

Maya Keyes is looking for answers to all those conservatives who e-mail her about how she's going to burn in hell and to all those liberals who e-mail her about how she's a traitor because she won't disavow her father. And then there are the people who think she's a whiny brat, "that I'm immature for thinking that I want my parents to talk to me."

"It all seems kind of ridiculous," she says, "because I love him. He's my father." A man who specializes in explaining the complexities of a trying world ought to be able to see something as simple as that.
 
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That's very sad. She sounds like a good person, and for parents to behave like that.... Good for her for insisting upon being herself.

I just bet they will regret it when they are on their death beds or whatever.I can't speak from experience about being gay the way some people here can, but to not be accepted by your parents for whatever reason is so painful. For being gay it must be especially painful, I can only imagine. I always thought a parent's love is supposed to be unconditional, though I don't know if I've ever experienced that myself.
 
Her parents have known that Maya is a lesbian since they found a copy of the Washington Blade, the gay weekly, in her room and confronted her at the end of high school (she went to Oakcrest School for Girls, a Catholic school in McLean run by the church's highly devout Opus Dei movement.) Ever since, Maya says, her parents have told her that her sexuality is wrong and sinful.
[/B]

Opus Dei 'highly devout'? That's being nice to Opus Dei, I largely consider them to be a cult operating within the Catholic church. Interesting how their particular brand of indoctrination didn't appear to work with this young lady.
 
Re: Re: Alan Keyes kicks Ivy League daughter out of the house for being gay.

financeguy said:
Opus Dei 'highly devout'? That's being nice to Opus Dei, I largely consider them to be a cult operating within the Catholic church.

I completely agree.

Melon
 
Maya Keyes is looking for answers to all those conservatives who e-mail her about how she's going to burn in hell and to all those liberals who e-mail her about how she's a traitor because she won't disavow her father. And then there are the people who think she's a whiny brat, "that I'm immature for thinking that I want my parents to talk to me."

Disgusting that either side turns Maya's life into a political football.

If there is truth to this article, then Alan Keyes is a complete idiot in the way he is treating his daughter.
 
nbcrusader said:
If there is truth to this article, then Alan Keyes is a complete idiot in the way he is treating his daughter.

Well, it happens quite often. Los Angeles is "home" to many homeless gay youth who were kicked out of their homes by their "Christian" parents.

It's about time that society gets its head out of the clouds and starts confronting reality.

Melon
 
What a pair of jerks (Keyes and his wife). Props to Maya for not caving to her parents unreasonable and vicious demands.

At least Keyes is an asshole to his own daughter instead of just being one to other people's kids (who are homosexual). Not that it gives any kind of comfort, but it shows me that pair don't have a compassionate cell in either one of their bodies.
 
I had the privelage of living in a state where Keyes was running against Obama. The only reason I say privelage is one he lost big time, and two he's almost entertaining he talks funny and he's full of so much hate you can't help thinking you're watching a charicature. But at the end of the day he's just an ass. One of the biggest asses in politics.

Such a godly man...:rolleyes:
 
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:banghead:...oh, my freakin' God...you know, we have so many serious issues in this world to worry about, things that actually could affect people in negative ways, so why people waste their time worrying about people's sexual orientation is beyond me.

I honestly don't understand how parents can treat their children that way. If my parents ever did something like that to me, I'd be heartbroken.

That poor girl :hug:. Nobody deserves to be treated that way, especially not by their own family.

Angela
 
Moonlit_Angel said:

That poor girl :hug:. Nobody deserves to be treated that way, especially not by their own family.


absolutely.

and she sounds like an outstanding young person -- smart, sincere, motivated, and dedicated to fighting for her beliefs.

oh, wait, i guess being a lesbian negates all the good you do and all that you accomplish.
 
When you have kids, you have all kinds of hopes and desires for them as they get older. You picture what they'll be like, what college they'll go to, who they'll marry etc. When things turn out differently than we hoped, of course there will be disapointment but my God, when it comes to something like this, you back your child up and support them. Being a parent doesn't mean you are only a parent when you agree with your child or they live their lives according to YOUR plan

Maya Keyes sounds like someone any parent would be proud of and Mr. and Mrs. Keyes are the ones who will lose out in the long run. I hope their close-minded bigotry is a great comfort to them. :|
 
nbcrusader said:


Disgusting that either side turns Maya's life into a political football.

If there is truth to this article, then Alan Keyes is a complete idiot in the way he is treating his daughter.

I agree!!!!!
 
I sure as hell hope it was a joke. How any intelligent, reasonable human being can decide to throw their child out, and deprive them of their education, because of stupid prejudice, is beyond me.
 
paxetaurora said:
Deep, want to clarify your last post for us?

If somebody was repeatedly molesting their daughter and she stayed in the household for economic reasons it would not be good.

How could living with or getting anything from this man be healthy for her?

He has been abusing her verbally and emotionally for years.

He did the right thing for HER, by cutting her off from HIM.

She is better off without him.
 
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nbcrusader said:
Disgusting that either side turns Maya's life into a political football.

If there is truth to this article, then Alan Keyes is a complete idiot in the way he is treating his daughter.
I agree. It would be more loving to respect his daughter, rather than to throw her out.
 
Re: Re: Alan Keyes kicks Ivy League daughter out of the house for being gay.

financeguy said:


Opus Dei 'highly devout'? That's being nice to Opus Dei, I largely consider them to be a cult operating within the Catholic church. Interesting how their particular brand of indoctrination didn't appear to work with this young lady.

I agree also. As a practicing Catholic, I can't stand Opus Dei. They are nothing more than a glorified cult of misguided fanatics, started by a Spanish supporter of Franco.
 
nbcrusader said:


Disgusting that either side turns Maya's life into a political football.

If there is truth to this article, then Alan Keyes is a complete idiot in the way he is treating his daughter.

I couldn't agree more. What a complete :censored:hole.
 
Daughter of conservative Republican calls herself 'liberal queer'


Maya Marcel-Keyes, 19, addressed a rally sponsored by the gay-rights group Equality Maryland, saying she was motivated to speak out because of her rocky relationship with her parents and the recent death of a friend who had fallen ill after being thrown out of the house by his family.

Looks like it was a friend who was thrown out, not Maya.

Later, Marcel-Keyes told CNN her parents "were not too pleased" when they learned she was a lesbian, but she said she loves them "very much, and they love me. They can't support my activities."
 
nbcrusader said:
Daughter of conservative Republican calls herself 'liberal queer'




Looks like it was a friend who was thrown out, not Maya.



not according to the Washington Post: "Now Maya Keyes -- liberal, lesbian and a little lost -- finds herself out on her own. She says her parents -- conservative commentator and perennial candidate Alan Keyes and his wife, Jocelyn -- threw her out of their house, refused to pay her college tuition and stopped speaking to her."

chances are, both were thrown out. and one of them died.

homophobia kills.
 
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