Alan Keyes Casting Out his Daughter
Fri Feb 04, 2005 at 02:18:29 PM PDT
I originally stumbled on this story as an entry in Oliver Willis's great blog at:
http://www.oliverwillis.com/node/view/1822
Alan Keyes has a daughter who is a lesbian, and she has finally come all the way out of the closet... much to her father's chagrin.
Valentine's Day Rally in Annapolis
Featuring Maya Marcel-Keyes, daughter of Alan Keyes and a self-described young queer anarchist who grew up in Darnestown, MD. Maya is speaking publicly for the first time about LGBT issues. Don't miss this important rally at 5 p.m. in front of the state house on February 14, also featuring Judy Shepard and other community leaders.
The family response?:
Keyes Fired Her and is Throwing his own Daughter Out
Well, it's happened. Finally and officially.
A couple days ago I got my official two-week warning that I have to be out of this apartment; so finally for real I'm getting cut off. I got no severance or anything like that from my sudden termination of employment (don't I have freedom of speech? the right to protest Bush without losing my job? Hehe... most people would think that working under a parent would be security but for me it's quite the opposite.) and so I definitely don't have anywhere near enough cash to find a new apartment; not even one room rented from someone anywhere. I've been searching craigslist but even places where I'd have enough to pay the first month's rent on some room I never have enough for the deposit as well, so so far I've had no luck at all finding a new home, since shelter requires money. Sad boo.
After all the arguments and tension over the years, I always hoped it would never actually get to this point, although I suppose given our vastly divergent political beliefs it was inevitable.
They -our friends on the far right- like to 'say' they don't 'hate homosexuals'. The just say that they merely 'hate' the sin or 'the lifestyle' that gay people lead. I say bullshit. They hate gay people. Nobody who can do this, to their own child, can pretend that there is any 'love' in this. You have to wonder, after all the garbage about 'family values', about 'God' and 'Jesus' and 'morals', what crawls as thought through the mind of a father who not only fires his own child, but pushes her out the door without the resources to start over. This man, ladies and gentlemen, wanted to be a U.S. Senator, and now wants to be a state Governor. A leader of men, and a crafter of laws. So I ask you, what kind of world would we all be living in if this man had any kind of power or say-so over any of our lives?
They say that it should be a source of pride, not of shame, for my parents that I'm so passionate about my beliefs, and work for what I believe in; even if they are not the beliefs my parents hold. They say that the only possible cause for shame anywhere in the whole situation is in the fact that after all this I am being cut off, jobless, soon to be homeless, and that although I have intelligence and motivation I won't be able to go to Brown after all because I have no money.
Aaaaaaaarghhh! This is so ugly... so damned petty and cruel that it makes me spit nails. Your child basically debunks all the lies of your movement's beliefs about people 'choosing' homosexuality like picking out a china pattern... by her very existence as your offspring she'd have been crazy to choose this... so you not only fire her after she put family ahead of principle and worked for a cause she didn't believe in, but you throw her, and the college education that will make her an independent human being, away like she is an inconvenient piece of flotsam????
And on the day that another ban on gay marriage gets whacked down in another court as blatant repression. I know crap like this happens every day, in the homes of unknown folks whose names you never hear about unless the child takes his or her own life and ends up as a blurb in the newspaper, but MAN. His own child? Isn't there any human kindness in Alan Keyes?
