Making a Point

I know I'm late to the party on the news that Alan Keyes' daughter Maya has called herself a "liberal queer." But Dan Savage's column in the NYT today puts a slightly more timely spin on things. He shares his discomfort with inevitable flip side to the gay children of conversatives coming out -- the fundamentalist Christian conservative children of gays:

But for gays and lesbians there's something particularly satisfying about watching a prominent antigay conservative learn that his or her own child is homosexual. It smacks of cosmic retribution: Mr. Keyes now has to choose between his antigay "pro-family" rhetoric and a member of his own family.

One day some prominent gay or lesbian parent - Rosie O'Donnell? Melissa Etheridge? little ol' me? - is going to cringe in horror when Matt Drudge breaks the news that one of our children has become a born-again Christian Republican who condemns his parents for their "selfish hedonism."

But I don't think that's inevitable, because I'd hope that those gay parents are teaching their children tolerance and acceptance and not teaching them to hate.

And while I only linked to one article, there are many more stories about Keyes and about other gay young people who are cut off from parental support, financial and otherwise, on the website of The Point Foundation which offers scholarships to gay students.