Maya Marcel-Keyes

Maya Marcel-Keyes
Born Maya Jeane Marcel-Keyes
(1985-05-23) May 23, 1985
New Jersey, United States
Known for Social and political activism

Maya Jeane Marcel-Keyes (born May 23, 1985) is an American social and political activist and daughter of Alan Keyes, a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Marcel-Keyes has been involved with the anarchist and gay rights movements, despite her staunch conservative upbringing.

Early life

Maya Marcel-Keyes was raised in Darnestown, Maryland, and attended a conservative, Catholic, girls high school: Oakcrest School in McLean, Virginia. She worked with a tribal rights group in southern India in her gap year before matriculating at Brown University in 2005. Around this time, she described herself as queer and anarchist.[1] Her parents confronted her about issues of the gay weekly The Washington Blade they found in her room towards the end of high school. They considered her sexuality "wrong and sinful" but lived amicably together as long as Marcel-Keyes did not communicate her politics or sexuality. When she returned from a Counterinaugural event against President George W. Bush, her father fired her from her job at his political organization, kicked her out of the house, and informed her that he would no longer fund her college education.[2] The death of a close friend who was kicked out of his parents' house motivated Marcel-Keys to speak publicly.[3]

Politics

2000 U.S. presidential election

During the 2000 U.S Presidential Election Season, Marcel-Keyes was instrumental in convincing her father, despite objections from his security detail, to throw himself into a mosh pit organized by activist and filmmaker Michael Moore during an Iowa caucus rally. Fellow Republican candidate Gary Bauer charged that the event was a cheap political stunt. In response, Dr. Keyes said that the mosh pit exemplified "the kind of trust in people that is the heart and soul of the Keyes campaign."[4]

2004 U.S. presidential election

Marcel-Keyes gained public notoriety after her father was nominated by the Illinois Republican Party as its candidate for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by retiring Senator Peter Fitzgerald. The previous nominee, businessman and educator Jack Ryan, removed himself from the race after damaging information from his divorce records were made public. Marcel-Keyes and her father moved to Calumet City and later to Chicago for the race.

Marcel-Keyes' sexual orientation was not widely known at the time of her father's entry into the Senate election, but questions arose when Keyes answered a reporter's question concerning the homosexuality of Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Keyes stated that all homosexuals were guilty of "selfish hedonism," Mary Cheney included.

The following September, a weblog[5] written by Gerald Farinas, an acquaintance of Marcel-Keyes, was discovered containing a link to what was believed to be, based on clues found on both sites, Marcel-Keyes' online journal. In it, the author described herself as "queer". Freelance bloggers concluded it was indeed Marcel-Keyes' site and pressured her to come out of the closet. Mainstream media outlets differed on how and whether to report the information discovered by the weblog community. Few moved on the issue and refrained from reporting the events surrounding Marcel-Keyes (until after she spoke to the media herself following the election), but all faced a barrage of requests for information. Marcel-Keyes had been out to her parents since they found a copy of the Washington Blade in her room and confronted her with it at the end of high school.[6]

After the 2004 campaign, Marcel-Keyes became a consultant for her father's Illinois office. However, on January 20, 2005, she participated in a march protesting the second inauguration of President George W. Bush. In 2005 Keyes relieved her from her duties and requested that she move out of an apartment funded by Keyes' political organizations in Chicago. Marcel-Keyes wrote in her online journal that her parents had given her two weeks to move out of the apartment, and had effectively left her "jobless and ... homeless."[7] In public she said she could understand this because "It doesn't make much sense for him to be [financially] supporting someone who is working against what he believes in." When asked if she was homeless, she said "Technically speaking, I don't have anywhere to go. I have lots of friends and I could probably go crash with them. I'm going back to Chicago and I'm not really sure what I'm going to do when I get there. I have no place to live there, but there have been people offering to help me find housing, offering to let me stay with them for a little while until I figure things out. I don't have an official place to live but I really doubt that I will be spending much time wandering the sidewalks." In the same interview she also criticized the media's reporting of the event.[8] She also discussed this series of events in an interview with The Advocate.[9]

References

  1. ↑ Crea, Joe (February 4, 2005). "Ehrlich, Steele mum on Md. marriage amendment: Alan Keyes’ daughter to headline pro-gay lobby day". Washington Blade.
  2. ↑ Fisher, Marc (February 13, 2005). "When Sexuality Undercuts a Family's Ties". The Washington Post. p. C01.
  3. ↑ "Alan Keyes' Gay Daughter Speaks Out". Fox News. Associated Press. February 15, 2005.
  4. ↑ Gail Collins. "Public Interests; Dignity, Always Dignity." The New York Times. January 28, 2000. Page 1.
  5. ↑ Xanga.com - The Blogging Community Archived February 21, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ↑ When Sexuality Undercuts A Family's Ties, Marc Fisher, Washington Post, 12 February 2005
  7. ↑ Marcel-Keyes's weblog on Xanga.com Archived August 20, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  8. ↑ William O'Bryan and Randy Shulman (2005-02-24). "Maya Keyes: Her Father's Daughter". Metro Weekly. Retrieved 2007-12-12.
  9. ↑ Maya Marcel-Keyes interview, Tom Musbach, The Advocate, February 2005
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