Maya Keyes

Maya 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. She also identifies herself as adamantly pro-life, describing this stance as integral to her pacifist beliefs.

Family and personal life

Marcel-Keyes was born in New Jersey and raised in suburban Maryland by Alan Keyes, and wife Jocelyn Marcel-Keyes who is a native of India. Marcel-Keyes is the second of three children. At the age of 16 she was confirmed into the Roman Catholic Church.

Influences

Maya Marcel-Keyes often sought friends that were outside the family's conservative atmosphere, befriending those that began to introduce her to new ideas. During her teenage years, Marcel-Keyes began to evaluate her sexual orientation. She eventually came out as a lesbian.[1] The death of a close friend, a young man named Shymmer, presaged Marcel-Keyes' entry into the public eye. Shymmer had been kicked out of his house at age 16 after revealing his sexual orientation to his parents, thereby forcing him to survive on the streets. After over three years living without a home, and facing many of the problems LGBT youth face while homeless — rape, beatings, prostitution — Shymmer died of starvation brought about by a severe case of anorexia nervosa.[2][3]

Marcel-Keyes spoke about Shymmer at an Equality Maryland rally on Valentine's Day, 2005.[4] [5]

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."[6]

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[7] 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.[8]

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."[9] 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.[10] She also discussed this series of events in an interview with The Advocate.[11]

Activism and beliefs

From an early age, Marcel-Keyes involved herself in her father's political work, in both pro-school choice circles and the pro-life movement. She believes in the philosophy of "peace for all who live," opposing all forms of violence — including the death penalty, abortion, all forms of war, and the killing of animals for consumption (she is a vegan). She states she is an anarchist,[12] and reportedly believes things such as access to health care, education, housing, food and jobs should be considered human rights.

To these ends, Marcel-Keyes is involved with a number of activist organizations. She has volunteered with Food Not Bombs, runs as a street medic at protests and is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Youth Advocacy Coalition, which speaks on behalf of LGBT families and youth all over the country. She also spent a year in the south of India teaching English and computer skills to tribal people with a group known as ACCORD, which aims to empower tribal people of India who have historically been oppressed and/or ignored by higher castes.

Honors and awards

References

  1. ↑ Point Foundation gives Maya a scholarship
  2. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20090217034651/http://www.lezkeepitreal.com/notable-lesbians-30/. Archived from the original on February 17, 2009. Retrieved April 30, 2009. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. ↑ Maya Marcel-Keyes speaks out, speech reproduced in Gay.com, February 14th 2005
  4. ↑ Equality Maryland Archived January 4, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  5. ↑ Article in New York Blade
  6. ↑ Gail Collins. "Public Interests; Dignity, Always Dignity." The New York Times. January 28, 2000. Page 1.
  7. ↑ Xanga.com - The Blogging Community Archived February 21, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  8. ↑ When Sexuality Undercuts A Family's Ties, Marc Fisher, Washington Post, 12 February 2005
  9. ↑ Marcel-Keyes's weblog on Xanga.com Archived August 20, 2006, at the Wayback Machine.
  10. ↑ William O'Bryan and Randy Shulman (2005-02-24). "Maya Keyes: Her Father's Daughter". Metro Weekly. Retrieved 2007-12-12.
  11. ↑ Maya Marcel-Keyes interview, Tom Musbach, The Advocate, February 2005
  12. ↑ Archived December 16, 2005, at the Wayback Machine.
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