In a recent interview with BuzzFeed News, actor Anthony Rapp, most known from his role as Mark in the original cast of the Broadway production “Rent,” publicly alleged that actor Kevin Spacey made sexual advances toward him when Rapp was only 14 years old.
Spacey responded by saying if he “did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”
He went on to reveal he has dated both men and women in his personal life, and said Rapp’s allegations caused him to examine his own life and behaviors. Spacey concluded his statement by professing that “I now choose to live life as a gay man.”
There are multiple issues with the nature of Spacey’s apology. First, it is not actually an apology. Spacey essentially just makes excuses for his actions by characterizing it as drunken behavior and then says he is sorry Rapp is still upset all these years later. A “sorry you feel that way” is nowhere close to the same as “I’m truly sorry for my actions.”
The second glaring issue with Spacey’s non-apologetic apology is his choice to close it by coming out as a gay man. An official statement discussing criminal sexual allegations against you is quite possibly the worst possible time to come out of the closet. There has been a long history in America of LGBTQ people, most specifically gay men, being characterized as sexual predators who are unsafe around children. Spacey choosing to combine these two statements just provides fuel for those looking to confirm this grossly inaccurate misconception.
In the 1970s, a time where LGBTQ rights were coming to the forefront of American political debate, singer and orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant famously ran a “save the children” campaign against gay rights under the guidance of televangelist Jerry Falwell. Bryant and Falwell warned the American public of the so called “threat of militant homosexuality” and claimed LGBTQ people were a threat to the nation’s children. Falwell wrote in a fundraising letter to his followers to “please remember, homosexuals don’t reproduce! They recruit! And they are out after my children and your children.”
It has been four decades since Bryant and Falwell’s campaign, but many of their sentiments remain. According to a 2017 Gallup Poll, 23 percent of Americans still believe same-sex relations between consenting adults should be illegal. In 2005, 43 percent of Americans believed LGBTQ individuals should not be hired as elementary school teachers. Gay men were not allowed to be scoutmasters in the Boy Scouts of America until 2015. In the transgender bathroom debate of 2016, the most vocal argument against allowing people the right to use whatever bathroom they choose was the threat of transgender people assaulting children.
Though these fears may be widespread, there is little true evidence that they are warranted. Research from the University of California, Davis found there is “no inherent connection between an adult’s sexual orientation and her or his propensity for endangering others.” Similarly, a 1998 literature review by behavioral psychiatrist Dr. Nathaniel McConaghy spoke on the lack of a link between homosexuality and pedophilia. McConaghy observed that “the man who offends against prepubertal or immediately post pubertal boys is typically not sexually interested in older men or in women.”
It is clear that many Americans still incorrectly believe that LGBTQ people are a threat to our children. For someone looking for a confirmation of their biases, Spacey’s admission appears to be a direct corroboration of their feelings. Instead of making a poor attempt to distract from the allegation against him, Spacey should have waited until a later time to come out.
Anna Coleman is a 19-year-old mass communication junior from Kennesaw, Georgia.
