Love of this father, unlike his Father’s

Maya Keyes, daughter of the former right-wing presidential candidate Alan Keyes, recently… Maya Keyes, daughter of the former right-wing presidential candidate Alan Keyes, recently sparked controversy among bloggers when she announced that she was preparing to officially come out as a lesbian during a pro-gay rally in Annapolis, Md.

At the rally on Tuesday, held in front of the State House, Maya said, “God works in really screwed up ways sometimes. There are times in life when he doesn’t just nudge you gently in the direction he wants you to go. He sorta takes a two-by-four and whacks you over the head with it a few times. Last month felt a lot like that for me.”

During his campaign, Alan Keyes infamously accused the vice president’s daughter, Mary Cheney, of being a “selfish hedonist” and said, “If my daughter were a lesbian, I’d look at her and say, ‘That is a relationship that is based on selfish hedonism.’ I would also tell my daughter that it’s a sin and she needs to pray to the Lord God to help her deal with that sin.”

Now that Keyes’ prophecy has come to fruition, reports are circulating that Maya has been kicked out of his apartment and that he is refusing to pay her tuition at Brown University next semester. Thankfully for Maya, a San Francisco-based charity called The Point Foundation has stepped forward to pick up the tab.

There is an obvious kind of poetic justice to a hard-line right-wing homophobe like Keyes spawning an openly left-wing, gay activist. It is the sort of Zen paradox that forces even atheists to consider the notion that the hand of a divine comedian might be at work behind the curtains.

I’ll pardon Maya if, for the time being, the humor is lost on her.

The Washington Post reported that she wrote in her online journal that, “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.”

It’s unfortunate that Maya’s father is too blinded by scripture to recognize that his God has blessed him with a daughter so near to perfection that she would make Helen of Troy flush with envy. Instead, he’s chosen to throw his baby out with the holy water.

Call me an idealist, but I like to think most reasonable, rationally thinking adults don’t need me to point out the self-righteous bigotry that is Alan Keyes, who, like Jerry Falwell before him, is quickly fading into irrelevance.

While Maya has shown courage and resolve in her unwillingness to live a lie for the sake of her father’s financial security, we should not allow the domestic drama surrounding the Keyes family to persist in the limelight as it did for the Cheneys when John Kerry regrettably invoked Mary’s name during the presidential debates.

It is exactly the kind of salacious gossip toward which talk-show hosts instinctively gravitate — the kind of non-issue that drove people to blogs and other alternative news sources in the first place.

As for Alan Keyes, his apartment will surely feel a little quieter this week.

But while he broods in the alienated silence that only his brand of hatred can breed, his daughter will be preaching something more closely aligned with the gospel her father purportedly holds so dear to his heart.

“I won’t be silent any longer. This is about the thousands of kids across the country growing up in houses where they’re raised hearing constantly how they are somehow wrong, unnatural, immoral just because of who they are,” she said.

“We have to figure out what we can do to make sure that during those times when it feels like everything in the world is rejecting them, they know there are resources they can turn to, that there are people out there who will say to them, ‘I care.'”

Michael Darling welcomes salacious gossip from selfish hedonists. Send feedback to mdarling82@yahoo.com.