Yes, she's a lesbian. According to her own blog and that of her girlfriend. They both posted this picture on the internet as I understand it. I saw it at her girlfriend's site who also has a gay.com profile (with more Maya pics).

There's been much handwringing in the leftie blogosphere about this picture, and others from the series, and the idea of publicizing Maya's sexuality at all. She is, after all, a 19 year old girl who can't be blamed for being the daughter of a near-psychotically conservative Republican U.S. Senatorial candidate from Maryland Illinois who recently called Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter a "selfish hedonist" because she was gay. Also, she was not outted by anyone other than herself on her own blog. Her Yahoo ID is "dangerousanjul". Indeed.

I too though, thought long and hard before blogging at all on this, and I believe it was finally this passage from Maya's rather moving blog that moved me to go ahead and jump in here:

Basically, this young girl describes having the gift of an education being held hostage from her by her parents because she is gay. I guess that's the "Compassionate Conservativism" we've heard so much about. Or would that be "Family Values"? (See chillinois' excellent chronical of many of today's events for more of those moving passages and other commentary from the 'sphere. The articles at Maya's girlfriend's blog --- who's mother seems to be similarly intolerant/cruel are also an object lesson in shame.)

That Maya has been pointing to her own blog for quite a while via her posts on a Keyes Campaign Message Group strikes me --- for all of my armchair psychiatry --- as a cry for help. Well, if America regains its senses and John Kerry is elected, perhaps as he likes to say "help is on the way".

One may note the suprising number of hard-right Conservatives with homosexuals in their immediate family (prominently Cheney's daughter, Gingrich's sister, now Keyes' daughter) and wonder how it is they manage to justify the hatred --- yes, hatred --- that they perpetuate on a daily basis. Through their words, their deeds, and their passive (and not so passive) tolerance for those that who oppress, deny, belittle, hurt, harm, hate and even advocate the murder of other humans solely on the basis of their sexual identities. All in the name of a few more votes.

Perhaps there is hope in this accidentally ironic thought of Alan Keyes from his recent hateful interview; "In the child, the two [parents] transcend their persons and unite together to become a new individual."

We can only hope.

                 

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