Keyes Followup

You remember the story I posted a few weeks back about Maya Keyes being thrown out of her family for being gay? As a refresher, her father is Alan Keyes, pschopathic Republican that ran for Senate out of Illinois last fall.

As I predicted, good things are happening for her. She's going to be able to attend Brown University after all, and she has a place to stay.

I had no idea there was a foundation that was setup by some very wealthy people who had been abandonded by their families for being gay, but subsequently became extremely sucessful. This organization does some amazingly good things to help these kids out. They put them through university - help them get established, and provide emotional and financial support.

Link here:

On the brighter side, it turns out she is not alone, but in the embrace of an organization that was set up a few years ago to help in heart-breaking situations like hers. Thanks to The Point Foundation, she will make it to Brown after all. She will not only have financial aid, she will have at least one adult mentor to confide in as her undergraduate life unfolds.

So will it go for 40 other young people honored a year ago with Point Foundation assistance. Vance Lancaster, the executive director, told me more than 1,000 teenagers applied for help last year, nearly 3,000 this year. What that means is, as he put it, ''Maya Keyes is . . . only the tip of an iceberg, especially when you realize that we are unable to do all that much outreach to kids nationally."

The foundation was established by a group of people who as students 30 years ago had also faced parental abandonment because they happened to be gay. They persevered, made it, and then made it big, resolving that they would use some of their wealth to provide the help they lacked.

There is some good news to be found after all. Here's an idea. How about instead of giving money to some church who would only use it to pay themselves a salary, and enable them to continue spewing their hate, how about we donate some money to help out kids that are trying to get started out in life after being completely abandoned by their fucking insane familes?

www.thepointfoundation.org

Every dollar goes to helping out a kid. It doesn't go to administrative costs of the foundation. The people that run that foundation are wealthy already so they just turn the donations directly into support for the kids. Give them some money - do it right now.

Maya Keyes is going to be a grand success.