The story thus far...
Apparently Alan Keyes--you know, the "gays and lesbians are all selfish hedonists" guy--has a daughter.
And apparently, if all signs are correct and everything's of credible provenance--apparently his daughter is a lesbian.
Kinda puts his comments about Mary Cheney into a whole new light, don't it.
Personally, I think Maya Keyes, Mary Cheney, the Gingrich sister and Deborah Mell (Gov. Blagojevich's sis-in-law) should form a support group against their stodgy, hypocritical relatives. I'd love to be a fly on the wall at one of THOSE meetings...
But seriously: Over at Chillinois, there's a comment thread (filled with trolls, of course) where the question is raised: "What do we do about this?"
Answer, from my stance: nothing. This is a woman--a human being. She's not a symbol or a weapon or a trump card--she's just another human being who wants the right to be in peace with the person she loves. Not unlike the rest of us--but unlike the rest of us, she has a father who's in the public eye and who disapproves of her choices. But that shouldn't disqualify HER from happiness.
Okay--so if it's all true: fine. We know it. And knowing it, we can judge her FATHER's words a little more accurately. But let's not use this information to involve Maya Keyes in something that isn't her fault. She had nothing to do with the fact that her father is a bigot.
To put it another way: There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish for my mother's empathy--she lost my father, I lost JP, but in her mind those losses are totally unalike--orders of magnitude separate her great loss from my "small" one--all because JP wasn't white. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish I could change the racist parts of my mother and let her see me as I really am, when I'm happy and comfortable with a man she can't even bring herself to meet because of his race.There isn't a day goes by that I don't wish my mother wasn't a racist--because the thing she doesn't realize is this: her racism didn't hurt JP and it doesn't hurt LJ--it hurts her, and it hurts me. It keeps us apart, and it keeps her from knowing who I really am.
It's the way I would imagine Maya Keyes feels about her father.
In theory I agree, except in this case Maya Keyes has been out campaigning with her father in Illinois. One of the primary parts of his campaign is his anti-gay stance. For her to participate in that campaign opens her up to the political fray.
ReplyDeleteThis is something I have noticed in this election cycle. There is a long standing and excellent rule about the media leaving the candidates kids out of it. But as soon as those kids start campaigning, they should be fair game. Just like everyone else that campaigns for the candidate.
Jason...The only thing about that is, her sexual orientation wouldn't MATTER--even if she was campaigning for her father--if HE hadn't thrown the first punch, so to speak. If HE hadn't opened his gaping yap about Mary Cheney, we would have no reason to care if his daughter was gay, straight, bi, or liked to swing from the chandeliers in the State House--but because he DID start quacking, it's all of a sudden an issue.
ReplyDeleteHer campaigning wasn't what made it an issue--her father's hypocrisy and inability to keep his mouth shut made it an issue. And that's not HER fault...we can't, after all, pick our parents.
(A friend of mine at work put it this way: "If your daddy LOOKED like Alan Keyes, and TALKED like Alan Keyes, and WAS Alan Keyes--don't you think YOU'D be scared off of men too???" Wrong though it may have been, I'll admit I giggled.)