C3416050 THE DISGRACED KEVIN SPACEY This week whilst scrolling through twitter, a shared tweet by Billy Eichner caught my attention. The tweet read: “Kevin Spacey has just invented something that’s never existed before: a bad time to come out.” Clueless to the situation, I swiped over to Google and tapped in Spacey’s name, and there they were, the allegations of molestation of a minor dating back just over 30 years in 1986. Alongside this was a pathetic attempt from Spacey to try and deflect from the crime of which he has been accused, by choosing this moment to come out as gay. LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall released a statement shunning him, describing his actions as being “harmful to the LGBT community” and stating that “his sexual orientation bears no relevance to the serious allegations he is facing, and to conflate these things is extremely damaging.” Upon reading more into the revelations and Spacey’s subsequent statement, it disgusts me that someone of such a high-profile could, in the same breath as his admission of guilt and apology to his victim, try to align himself with the LGBTQ+ community in a feeble attempt to divert attention from his shocking crime. Sadly, this has been a repeated technique used by powerful Hollywood men in the last couple of months where we have witnessed an out-pouring of sexual assault claims against the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Louis C.K. to name just two. In the midst of this shocking sequence of events, comedian James Corden’s ill-judged decision to try and make light of the accusations against Weinstein at the amfAR Foundation for AIDS Research Gala in LA, comes far too soon after the numerous and damning claims were made. This goes to display again a level of complete ignorance regarding the severity of the issues, which people in positions of power should be doing their best to condemn and stand up against and certainly not to make light of. Speaking about the Spacey allegations, LGBTQ+ campaigner Dan Savage hit the nail on the head when he asserted that “there’s no amount of drunk or closeted that excuses or explains away assaulting a 14-yearold child.” Spacey’s harmful statement has the potential of throwing us back into the days when the gay community were heavily ostracized from society and depicted as villains. For years he has denied his homosexuality, until now, when it is convenient for him to use his sexuality as a scapegoat for the crime he has committed. To my own disgust, some media institutions chose to completely ignore the initial part of Spacey’s statement where he admits to child molestation, with their headlines focussing solely on his coming out. ABC News reported the story under the headline “Kevin Spacey Comes Out in Emotional Tweet.” The complete insensitivity and lack of regard for the real issue at hand- that of the allegations against Spaceywhich is displayed by outlets such as ABC News, means that Spacey’s plan to manipulate the media by offering them a sensational headline regarding his sexuality rather than addressing the real issue of his crime, allows such allegations to be belittled. Spacey further fuelled the fire against him in stating “I choose now to live as a gay man”. As I and every other member of the LGBTQ+ community know full well, it is not a choice, it is just something that you are. What Spacey chose to do was to demonstrate a complete lack of respect for the people he was trying to affiliate himself with. Woe betide anyone encourage mistrust of the LGBTQ+ community again, least of all the coward that is Kevin Spacey.
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