What To Think About Kevin Spacey?
My gut response to the assault of any person, especially a child, is horror. How could you do such a thing? My spiritual response is more complex: I feel for the destruction wrought on a young person and its long-term effects. But I also make an attempt to understand the person who is accused: what has caused the sickness of spirit? With Kevin Spacey, who has been accused by Anthony Rapp of assaulting him when Rapp was 14, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that that sickness was caused by being for so many years — decades, really — in the closet. So much hidden behavior, and attempts and related rationalizations. Could
Spacey have lived a healthier, less violent life if he had come out in his 20s, before the Rapp incident, and possibly other incidents, occurred? Who knows? What we do know right now is that Spacey has used the occasion of the accusation to come out of the closet, as if this long-overdue honesty might help limit the damage to him and his career of the incident. But it doesn’t work that way. Being gay and being a pedophile are not the same, and Spacey’s coming-out has muddied that distinction — again. And for Spacey to say he forgot the incident because he was drunk is equally horrible: just because you are drunk or high doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for your behavior.
