Posted on 02/14/2005 9:46:45 AM PST by metalmanx2j
MARYLAND - Scheduled to speak at an Equality Maryland rally for gay rights today, Maya Keyes, 19, daughter of former Illinois Republican U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes, is speaking publicly for the first time about her sexuality and her soured relationship with her parents. Both Advocate.com and The Washington Post ran articles over the weekend wherein Maya Keyes discussed the situation.
Read Maya Keyes' interview with Advocate.com:
Maya Keyes ends speculation about her sexuality.
On Sunday, Marc Fisher of the Washington Post reported,
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."
The issue of Maya Keyes' sexuality came up during the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois when Capitol Fax publisher Rich Miller discovered a blog apparently populated by Maya that discussed her family and her sexuality and included pictures of her kissing another girl. The story remained underground during the Senate campaign thanks in large measure to the campaign's unwillingness to confirm or deny that the blog was indeed Maya's.
According to Fisher's piece in the Washington Post, despite the fact that Maya has been kicked out of her home, a San Francisco-based charity, the Point Foundation, has stepped in to provide the money needed for Maya to begin her studies at Brown University.
Interestingly, Maya Keyes seems to harbor little ill will towards her father. Again, from the Washington Post,
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...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..."It all seems kind of ridiculous," she says, "because I love him. He's my father."
© 2005 IllinoisLeader.com
Life is all about choices. Some people make bad choices then have to live with them.
Who are you referring to here? Maya's friend whose parents kicked him out of the house & onto the streets at age 16? Yeah, that was his fault.
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