Maya Keyes has finally been disowned by her father, the uber-right Alan Keyes. According to Maya, not only have they thrown her out of the house and refused to pay for her tuition at Brown University, they've also stopped speaking to her. She'll be able to stay with friends, and the Point Foundation, a charity that helps pay tuition for gay students, has stepped up to help with the cost of college. But how do you replace contact with your parents? What they are doing isn't love, it's sick and twisted and destructive. Maya has it right:
"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."
Yes, most parents would be thrilled with that. But some people are so blinded by their bigotry that they will sacrifice their relationship with their children. What is most sad is how common this is. Look at this post from another blogger about his parents forcing him to go to a therapist to "cure" his homosexuality. I've known so many people who have gone through this and it is tragic every time. And it seems to happen quite often with intolerent religious right activists - Alan Keyes, Phyllis Schlafly, Randall Terry, and many others. That so many of them are willing to throw their children away on the altar of sexual correctness only goes to show that the phrase "family values" is a lie. They don't value families; they value having the authority to control others or punish them at their pleasure. There is a highly sadistic undertone to the entire thing.
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Well put, Ed.
And one can only wonder how much the anti-gay agitation of the parents is motivated by an unconscious desire to either save or punish (or both) their child by proxy.
(I'm honestly coming up blank as to how to ask this, so please forgive me if my tone isn't conveyed correctly - I'm not trying to spam a comments section, or nitpick, or cause trouble: ) Can I ask why you use the phrase "sexual correctness"? To me, it seems like it's saying the "culture wars" over queer rights is solely about sexuality. (The reasons this (common) implication bothers me are that a) I have some conservative morals regarding sexual behavior, and hate the implication by otherwise reasonable gay folks that I'm somehow betraying the quest for equality by having different morals (from them) about sexuality, and b) I also happen to be asexual (and biromantic), and yet for all the antigay leaders' saying that their objections are all about "sexual morality" and the like, I don't think they'd hesitate to condemn me if I fell in love with another female and wanted to marry her, regardless of the lack of a sexual component to my feelings. I'm really sorry if I'm reading way too much into this based on my own past frustrations - I've done that before.
Stcynic:
Well, this is very sad, but I wonder...Why will she need to talk with a father like Alan Keyes?
The most horrendous thing about this to me is that it seems like she spends a great deal of her time caring for and trying to help out homeless gay youth - many of whom are homeless because their parents kicked them out for being gay.
Seems like one of the Keyes got the point of the whole "Whatsoever ye do unto the least of them..." bit, and one of 'em didn't.
As someone who is estranged from her own family, I can say that losing your family is perhaps one of the most tragic things that can happen to a person - it leaves a wound that never really fully heals. You don't ever get over it; you just learn to deal with it. Family is so damn important, and I will never understand people who don't get that. My thoughts and best wishes will be with this girl.
Jesus Christ jumping on a pogo stick - Alan Keyes' website still refers to him as a "dedicated family man". I'm trying not to feel overwhelmed with hate for this jerk, but at this point I'm going to have to send him the repair bill for my irony meter.
What happened to "hate the sin but not the sinner" mentality that most Christian politician's tout when discussing their approval for an amendment to the Constitution to ban gay marriage?
According to Keyes, the only reason for sex is to procreate:
Damn-it... now I have another label, hedonist! :)
Keyes, who holds a Ph.D from Harvard University
A bullshit Phd--"piled higher and deeper"--is still bullshit.
From On Bullshit: http://www.anthonyflood.com/onbullshit.htm
This reminds me of a rant Chris Rock had about bigoted parents along the lines "If you hate gays, one of your kids will become one. If you hate Blacks, your daughter will walk in with a big Jamacian guy." Seriously I wish the best of luck to his daughter.
coffeedrinker-
You're definitely overthinking the wording of "sexual correctness". I used it only as a play on words on "political correctness", in the sense that they are willing to sacrifice their family solely because their daughter's sexuality offends them. It wasn't meant to make any statement at all about sexual behavior.
Jillian wrote:
As someone who is estranged from her own family, I can say that losing your family is perhaps one of the most tragic things that can happen to a person - it leaves a wound that never really fully heals. You don't ever get over it; you just learn to deal with it. Family is so damn important, and I will never understand people who don't get that. My thoughts and best wishes will be with this girl.
I think that's why this sort of thing resonates so deeply with me. My family is so incredibly important to me. My father and I are very close. And I can't conceive of what I could do short of becoming a serial killer that would cause him to sever that relationship. I know that being gay wouldn't do it because I saw how he handled my uncle not only being gay, but having AIDS. He brought my uncle into his home, took care of him for 10 years, and worked tirelessly with him to establish a foundation to help other AIDS victims. That's just the kind of man my father is. And I think it's tragic that Alan Keyes is the opposite kind of man, and even more tragic that there are so many like him.
Here's an additional irony. My father is an atheist, while Keyes is an allegedly devout Christian. My stepmother is also a devout Christian, but unlike Keyes, she also took care of my uncle for 10 years and worked hard to help so many people afflicted with that disease. Unlike Keyes, she understood that when Jesus said, "Whatever you do to the least of these, my brethren, you do unto me also", he didn't exclude homosexuals. She believed that she had a duty as a Christian to love her neighbor, not just in words but in actions.
My father, on the other hand, just believed that he had a duty, period, to do what he could to help those in need. He agrees with Arthur Ashe that service to others is the rent you pay for the space you occupy on this planet. That's why he did what he did for my uncle and for AIDS patients. It's why he spends so much time in his retirement building access ramps and other useful remodeling for the handicapped at their homes, or working with Habitat for Humanity on houses for the poor. And there is no doubt in my mind that if there is a God who judges us, he will judge an atheist like my father far better than a "Christian" like Keyes, who preaches incessantly but whose actions only destroy and hurt. Alan Keyes needs to take a lesson from St. Francis of Asissi, who said, "We should continually preach the ideals of Christ; sometimes we should use words."
What bothers me the most about the hypocrisy of Alan Keyes and other conservatives with gay children (the LaHayes - she of Concerned Women for America, he of the "Left Behind" series, Phyllis Schlafly, Bob Knight of CA) is the absolute refusal to even imagine they could be wrong about something, or even "agree to disagree." They are so wrapped up in the certainty of their own moral correctness they miss out on the much bigger picture - perhaps Maya is correct and being a lesbian is not a big deal. You don't have to believe she is right to believe she has the right to live her life according to her beliefs. Sure, I could still see Keyes refusing to subsidize her if her were gay (I'd still consider it petty, but plenty of parents have done the same thing when differences with their children emerge), but to refuse contact with her? That's simply criminal; she is still their daughter.
Hey, this is family values.
Ed, your response to Jillian was beautiful.
As I have stated before, my brother was gay and has died as a result of that dreaded disease AIDs.
My brother used to tell me how simple life would have been for him had he not been gay. He wanted those who thought he chose to be homosexual to know that no one would choose to be treated so poorly by those they love so much.
We are who we are. Who we decide to love has nothing to do with our morality. God loves all of us and doesn't play favorites.
Our father was a minister in the Methodist church. Not once did he say a hurtful thing to or about my brother. Dad embraced my brother with love and respect. He also embraced my brother's gay and lesbian friends. I don't think there was a time we all didn't know he was gay.
Being a Christian means to love one another and to glory in our differences.
Let's pray that Mr. Keyes and others like him will come to their senses someday and see the pain they are causing the ones who love them.
Lynn-
Well said. I think the fact that we were blessed with such wonderful fathers is what makes us so angry when we see other fathers who behave this way. And it highlights a point I've long made, that religious belief has virtually nothing to do with character and morality. My father is an atheist, yours was a minister. Yet they share a common conviction about how you treat other people and a common understanding of the importance not only of tolerance, but of compassion and caring. Yet most people would categorize your father with Alan Keyes and put my father in a separate category because the first two are Christian and the third is an atheist. That's really drawing the lines in the wrong place. The categories should instead put my father and your father together in the category of men of decency and good will, and put Keyes in the category of intolerance and destructiveness. What is important is how you treat other people, the compassion and decency that you show toward them, not whether you belong to a religion. There are men of compassion and decency to be found both inside and outside of those meaningless religious categories.