Feb 04, 2005   | COMMENTS     

would show up but media reports estimated that only 1,000 demonstrators participated in the event.

Delegate Emmett Burns (D-Baltimore County) — known for his anti-gay positions — took to the podium to deride gay men and lesbians, according to the Associated Press, and was booed by some protesters.

“I’m married to a woman,’’ Burns said. “My wife is pretty and she’s soft. I won’t turn on my pillow in the morning and hear someone say [in a deep voice], ‘Good morning. How are you?’”

In a related development, Equality Maryland announced this week that Maya Keyes, the lesbian daughter of the anti-gay conservative Alan Keyes, is scheduled to headline the group’s lobby day in Annapolis on Feb. 14.

Keyes was the subject of much speculation last fall during her father’s failed campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. Various Web sites and bloggers circulated rumors that the former ambassador’s daughter was a lesbian. The story gained particular significance after Alan Keyes called Vice President Dick Cheney’s gay daughter Mary a “selfish hedonist” during a radio interview in August at the Republican National Convention in New York.

According to an Equality Maryland statement, Maya Marcel-Keyes describes herself as a “young queer anarchist.” She was raised in Darnestown, Md., and attended high school at Oakcrest Preparatory School, a conservative Catholic school for girls in McLean, Va. She spent a year in the south of India where she worked with a tribal rights group and plans to attend Brown University this fall.