Out--and Kicked Out

When Sexuality Undercuts A Family's Ties

Remember Maya Keyes? The daughter of Alan Keyes who was, months ago, discovered to have a blog on which she revealed herself to be a lesbian, right around the same time father Alan was criticizing Mary Cheney?

She's been kicked out without a dime. A foundation that helps young gays and lesbians in similar situations is helping her pay for her education at Brown University, and she's speaking out about her experience.

Good for her, I say. But this represents a vast failure of the mainstream media. This story was timely last fall, when Keyes was running for Senate, calling Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist," and speaking at anti-gay rallies. Why didn't Keyes have to face questions about this matter back then? When the media went apeshit over the fact that John Kerry mentioned Mary Cheney's widely-known (and traded-upon, at Coors) sexual orientation during a debate, why wasn't his comfort with the subject and respect for gays and lesbians contrasted with Keyes' third-person hypothetical discussion of how he would treat his very real lesbian daughter, or his lambasting of both Mary Cheney and, by extension, Dick and Lynne? Why wasn't Lynne asked for her reaction to Keyes? The media could have stirred the pot, could have asked why the Cheneys would lash out against Kerry for mentioning their daughter positively while running on the same ticket in Illinois as a man who called her a sinner. We could have had a real discussion of this issue.

Instead, we had direct-mail pieces that said liberals would ban the Bible. Mary Cheney hid from view until the Inauguration. The Democrats, afraid of alienating voters they could never have won over anyhow, walked some imaginary line between pseudo-tolerance and embrace, while Republicans watched them and laughed.

Maya did what she thought she had to do: She stood by her father. That's her right. But for the media to let this story drop off the radar until now did an injustice to an important national conversation that won't be easily remedied. Some liberal media.

I hope Alan Keyes runs for office again. I want to hear him explain his decision to kick out his daughter for being a lesbian. I want to hear other Republicans defend him--or, I hope, shy away. I want the nation to recoil in disgust from him, and to realize that there's no excuse for treating a child differently because of his or her sexual orientation. If everyone can agree about that, the rest of it--the rights and privileges of civil marriage, nationwide employment equality, an end to hate crimes--can't be too far behind.