Republican Aaron Schock comes out as gay after anti-gay history of voting in Congress
A former Republican Congressman, who has a history of anti-gay votes while in politics, has come out, revealing he has been shunned by his family.
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A former Republican Congressman, who voted against the repeal of US Military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, policy has come out as gay.
Aaron Schock from Illinois opened up about his sexuality and how the revelation to his family that he is gay has caused an estrangement.
“I am gay,” Mr Shock wrote. “For those who know me and for many who only know of me, this will come as no surprise. For the past year, I have been working through a list of people who I felt should finally hear the news directly from me before I made a public statement. I wanted my mother, my father, my sisters, my brother, and my closest friends to hear it from me first.
“The fact that I am gay is just one of those things in my life in need of explicit affirmation, to remove any doubt and to finally validate who I am as a person. In many ways I regret the time wasted in not having done so sooner,” he said.
Mr Schock said he stayed in the closet during his time in Congress because he was worried about how it would hurt his political prospects.
“Arriving in Washington in 2009, as the youngest member of Congress, I received a lot of attention. I confess to enjoying it, though in my case, the attention also glided toward speculation. I was a single guy, and people would comment on how I dressed, and about my preoccupation with physical fitness,” he wrote. “Perhaps correctly, perhaps not, I assumed that revealing myself as their gay congressman would not go over well. I put my ambition over the truth, which not only hurt me, but others as well.”
Mr Schock said he planned to come out to his family at Easter but when pictures surfaced of him at the Coachella music festival with his hands down the pants of another man, his mother “told me to turn around and go back to LA. I wasn’t welcome at home for Easter”.
“What I had to share was unwelcome news to every single person in my family, out of the blue in some cases, and was met with sadness, disappointment, and unsympathetic citations to Scripture,” he said. “I still get occasional emails (from my family) trying to sell me on conversion therapy, but recently at our relative’s wedding, my mother told me that if there is anyone special in my life, she wants to meet them. I’m optimistic about the future and ready to write the next chapter of my life.”
Mr Schock also defended his anti-gay voting record while in Congress. He voted against lifting the ban on LGBT people serving in the military and voted not to extend hate crime protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
He was also on the record against marriage equality.
“No one gets to choose when we learn our lives’ big lessons. Mine have been no different. In 2008, as a Republican running in a conservative district, I took the same position on gay marriage held by my party’s nominee, John McCain. That position against marriage equality, though, was also then held by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as well,” he wrote. “That fact doesn’t make my then position any less wrong, but it’s sometimes easy to forget that it was leaders of both parties who for so long wrongly understood what it was to defend the right to marry.
“As is the case throughout most of human history, those who advance the greatest social change never hold elected office. I can live openly now as a gay man because of the extraordinary, brave people who had the courage to fight for our rights when I did not: community activists, leaders, and ordinary LGBT folks. Gay bloggers who rallied people to our cause. I recognize this even in the face of the intense and sometimes vicious criticism that I’ve received from those same people.
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“The truth is that if I were in Congress today, I would support LGBTQ rights in every way I could. I realise that some of my political positions run very much counter to the mainstream of the LGBTQ movement, and I respect them for those differences. I hope people will allow for me the same,” he said.
Originally published as Republican Aaron Schock comes out as gay after anti-gay history of voting in Congress