Maya Marcel-Keyes
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Maya J. Marcel-Keyes, more commonly known as Maya Keyes (born May 23, 1985), is an American political activist and daughter of United States Ambassador Alan Keyes, former Republican presidential and senatorial candidate and advisor to Ronald Reagan. Despite her staunch conservative upbringing, Marcel-Keyes has been involved with the anarchist and gay rights movements. She also identifies herself as adamantly pro-life. Her father called her a selfish hedonist.
Family
Marcel-Keyes was born in New Jersey and raised in suburban Maryland by Keyes and wife Jocelyn Marcel-Keyes, formerly of Calcutta, India. Marcel-Keyes is the second of three children, raised by the traditional values of Roman Catholicism and schooled by members of Opus Dei.
Influences
Marcel-Keyes often sought friends that were outside the family's conservative atmosphere, befriending those that began to introduce her to more radical theories. Her friends included drug addicts, homeless gay youth and victims of HIV and AIDS.
During her teenage years, Marcel-Keyes began to re-evaluate her sexual identity. She eventually came out as queer.
The death of a close friend of hers, a young man named Shymmer, presaged Marcel-Keyes' entry into the public eye. Shymmer had been kicked out of his house at age sixteen 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 after a Washington, D.C. hospital refused to provide him an IV drip.
Marcel-Keyes spoke about Shymmer at an Equality Maryland rally on Valentine's Day, 2005.[1][2]
Politics
2000 Election
During the 2000 U.S Presidential Election Season, Marcel-Keyes was instrumental in convincing her father, despite objections from his U.S. Secret Service 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, Keyes said that the mosh pit exemplified "the kind of trust in people that is the heart and soul of the Keyes campaign." He continued, "and when you trust them, they will in fact hold you up, whether it's in terms of giving help to you when you're falling down or caring for their own children."
2004 Election
Marcel-Keyes gained public notoriety after her father won the Illinois Republican Party's nomination 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 was 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 Dr. 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 [3] 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. Many feared that the weblogs reported rumors that were unsupported by conclusive evidence.
After the 2004 campaign, Marcel-Keyes became a consultant for Keyes' Illinois office. However, on January 20, 2005, she participated in a march protesting the second inauguration of President George W. Bush. Keyes relieved his daughter 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 [4] that her parents had not only cast her out of the apartment, but had refused to let her return to the family home in Maryland, leaving her unemployed and homeless.
Activism and beliefs
From an early age, Marcel-Keyes involved herself in her father's political work, especially in 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's a devout vegan). She's also an anarchist[5] that believes things such as access to health care, education, housing, food and jobs are not privileges for those who can afford them, but basic human rights.
To these ends, Maya 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
- Ms. Keyes was awarded the Wanda Alston Scholarship through The Point Foundation, a charity based in San Francisco, California and currently attends Brown University. [6].
- In June 2005, Keyes became a member of the board of directors of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition. This organization works on behalf of LGBT youth and families throuoghout the United States.
- On December 7, 2005, Ms. Keyes received the Emery Award, presented by the Hetrick-Martin Institute for outstanding work on behalf of homeless LGBT youth.