On Sunday night, BuzzFeed published an interview with actor Anthony Rapp, who accused Kevin Spacey of making a sexual advance on him when he was only 14-years-old over 30 years ago.
Spacey stated he did not remember the incident, but also used the opportunity to officially come out as a gay man, which has been speculated for many years.
Now many, especially in the LGBT community, have blasted Spacey for using his sexuality as cover for his alleged sexual misconduct. They have a point because I noticed a lot in the media making the story about Spacey’s sexuality instead of Rapp’s claims.
Rapp explained that in 1986, Spacey invited him to a party at his apartment. Rapp saw that he was the only kid there and went to the bedroom to watch TV. After everyone left, Spacey came to the bedroom, “picked Rapp up, placed him on his bed, and climbed on top of him, making a sexual advance.”
Spacey released this statement:
So not only is he trying to use his sexuality to deflect from the real issue at hand, he’s also exploiting the worst stereotype of gay men: child predators.
It didn’t take long for people to lash out at him:
At The Daily Beast, Ira Madison III penned an article on how Spacey’s statement “grossly conflates pedophilia with homosexuality.” He wrote:
For Spacey to say, “if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior,” implies that when most gay men get drunk, it’s second nature for them to prey on a 14-year-old boy. It calls to mind hateful rhetoric like Anita Bryant’s 1977 Save Our Children campaign, which sought to associate gay men and child predators. Of gay men, Bryant infamously said, “Some of the stories I could tell you of child recruitment and child abuse by homosexuals would turn your stomach.”
Seth Mandel, op-ed editor of the New York Post, asked his gay friends on Twitter for their reaction to Spacey’s statement:
You can take a wild guess what they said:
It also didn’t take very long for the media to latch onto the second half of the statement, burying the accusations against Spacey.
The New York Daily News originally tweeted out that “Kevin Spacey announced Sunday night that he will ‘live as a gay man'” before it decided to use some common sense:
Why do we hate the media?
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