HECHE KEEPS KIDS FROM HER MOTHER

Heche was sexually abused as a child by her evangelical Christian father, a closet homosexual who died of Aids in 1983. After his death, her mother Nancy joined Focus on the Family to preach against same-sex relations.

And Heche, who dated comedienne Ellen DeGeneres in the 1990s, doesn't want her sons Atlas, five months, and Homer, seven, to meet their grandmother, who hates "anything gay".

She explains, "My mother's had a very tragic life. Three of her five children are dead, and her husband is dead. That she is attempting to change gay people into straight people is, in my opinion, a way to keep the pain of the truth out. People wonder why I am so forthcoming with the truths that have happened in my life, and it's because the lies that I have been surrounded with and the denial that I was raised in, for better or worse, bore a child of truth and love.

"My mother preaches to this day the opposite of that core of my life. It is no mistake that she still stands up against love. And one wonders why I'm not rushing to have her meet my children."