This morning actor Kevin Spacey, aged 58, announced via Twitter that he is gay.
This decision, to reveal publicly what his closest friends had known about him privately, is one that should be applauded. Each person with a high profile that lives openly and authentically helps to normalise same-sex relationships, undermine misconceptions and ease feelings of isolation and shame for LGBTQI people.
Yet here comes the ‘but’…
The New Jersey born Oscar winner bundled the revelation in with an entirely seperate issue: accusations of sexual misconduct made against him by fellow actor, Star Trek: Discovery star, Anthony Rapp.
The now 46-year-old alleged via an interview with BuzzFeed that Spacey had scooped him up, placed him on a bed and laid on top of him at a party at the American Beauty star’s apartment in 1986. He was 14.
“He [Spacey] picked me up, like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold. But I don’t, like, squirm away initially, because I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then he lays down on top of me,” Rapp told the outlet.
“The older I get, and the more I know, I feel very fortunate that something worse didn’t happen. And at the same time, the older I get, the more I can’t believe it.
“I could never imagine [that] anyone else I know would do something like that to a 14-year-old boy.”
In the Tweet addressing Rapp's allegations, Spacey was notably apologetic and "beyond mortified".
"I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago," he wrote. "But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years."