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By: JENNIFER VANASCO
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EVERY TIME I hear something new about Alan Keyes, I shake my head in disbelief.
Keyes is the Republican running for the U.S. Senate from Illinois — well,
he’s limping for Senate.
There’s no way he’s going to win against the powerhouse Democrat
Barack Obama. And that’s a good thing.
A few weeks ago, I saw a truck trolling though one of Chicago’s working
class neighborhoods. It seemed to be an advertisement from the Keyes campaign,
extolling Keyes and condemning Obama as anti-family — because he is not
anti-gay.
This reminded me of Keyes’ remarks in late August, when he said that
homosexuality was based “on the premise of selfish hedonism,” because
gay and lesbian couples can’t have children except through adoption or
insemination.
Asked if that meant Keyes would call Mary Cheney a selfish hedonist, Keyes
replied, “Of course she is. That goes by definition. Of course she is.”
Mary Cheney is a selfish hedonist because she’s a lesbian.
NOW IT TURNS out that Keyes’ daughter might be — hold your breath
— a lesbian. Why am I not surprised?
We usually take it for granted that the more vociferously someone is against
us, the more likely it is that they are hiding something. So that Keyes might
have a lesbian in his immediate family makes perfect sense.
But this is what I don’t understand: Maya has deferred her admission
to Brown University so she can help her father’s campaign. After some
initial publicity, the blog where she ruminated about her girlfriend has been
stripped of most lesbian references. And she has maintained a public silence.
She is working on the campaign of someone who has basically called her and
her girlfriend “selfish hedonists” because they are in love. What
makes it more complicated, of course, is that this “someone” is
her father.
This might remind you a bit of Mary Cheney. Mary has been working behind the
scenes for the Bush/Cheney campaign, even though the Bush administration has
made it clear that it would be very, very happy if we would all just disappear.
Dick Cheney, at least, has semi-supported his daughter in public, making it
clear that he is not opposed to civil unions. And Maya is very young. She’s
just 19, so perhaps she is just exploring being a lesbian, not committing to
it.
Still, there is something disturbing about how these women are willing to submerge
an essential part of themselves to work for politicians who are actively trying
to dismantle their civil rights.
THEY ARE NOT alone, of course. There are scores of gay staffers in Washington,
D.C. who work for the Republican National Committee, or for anti-gay Republicans
on Capitol Hill.
Mary and Maya just happen to have caught the brunt of the publicity, since
the anti-gay Republicans they work for are in the family.
This makes me think that maybe National Coming Out Day, Oct. 11, needs a second
component, now that our movement is maturing. It isn’t good enough to
kick down your own closet door if you then help to shove your brothers and sisters
back into the suffocating darkness.
Coming out is a long, hard process and can’t be done on a schedule. But
once you’ve dealt with being gay, it is unacceptable to actively work
against your community.
In fact, if you work against your community, I’m not sure you can call
yourself gay. “Gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual”
and “queer” are political identities, not just personal and cultural
identities.
If you work against your own people, you may still be homosexual, but gay?
No. We don’t want you.
Working against your own community is betrayal of the most intimate kind. It
is betraying those before you who fought for your rights. And it is betraying
yourself. It is saying that you think so little of yourself that you are willing
to let an essential part of your identity be trampled on just for approval,
prestige or power.
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