Forgive, But Don’t Forget: Learning to Deal with Non-Apologies
By: Jay Butler
Tags: Christianity, LGBTQ

Good afternoon everyone! Spring is finally here in NC, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. It seems like February showers brought March flowers this year. With the election and COVID-19 dominating the news headlines, and with good reason, you may have missed two significant stories that were in the news last week. They’re significant for a couple of reasons. First, they involve startling personal admissions. They’re also significant because they do a piss-poor job of apologizing.

The first story I want to talk about former US Representative Aaron Schock publicly revealing his sexual orientation. While it was widely suspected that he was gay, his admission is nevertheless important. The former Republican representative from Illinois issued a statement last Friday. It begins as such:

I am gay. 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. I offer my story as one person’s experience. I’ve come to believe it is, in some respects, just a more public version of a difficult and ultimately, now optimistic, journey familiar to many LGBTQ people. My story starts in the rural Midwest, as part of a family centered in a faith and its particular traditions. At the Apostolic Christian Church where we belonged, we were enthusiastic regulars. My parents did their best to raise me and my siblings according to biblical tenets as they understood them. When our family moved from our farm in Minnesota to Peoria, Illinois, we wound up in one of the less rigid branches of our church. So, while our previous congregation had, for example, considered watching TV to be sinfully idle, the Peoria branch let it slide. In many ways, I thrived in this environment. It helped me to live with a feeling of purpose and taught me to try to treat others as I would want to be treated. Memorizing Bible verses, going to church camp, attending services at least twice a week — that was my world. I’m sure I knew other gay people in those years of growing up, but I don’t think any of us were aware of it. I understood that the teachings of my upbringing were pretty clear on the matter. Because of it, as I got older and first felt myself drawn in the direction of my natural orientation, I didn’t want to think about it. I always preferred to force my thoughts in other directions, leaving a final answer about that for another day. To that end, it helped that I was also born a fairly goal-focused personality, driven to succeed and to push myself in every way I knew how. My focus early in life was on getting a head start in business, purchasing my first piece of real estate while still in high school. But when my local school board blocked my attempts at early graduation, it’s that same drive that also pushed me to pursue elective office, first on the school board at 19, on to the Illinois legislature at 23, and in Congress at 27. In spite of that success, or maybe because of it, I still lived a pretty sheltered life.

So up until this point, I empathize with Schock. He and I have similar upbringings, even if his religious background was stricter than mine. His coming out process was not unlike mine, too. Here’s where he starts to lose me…

While feeling at times like my mother’s fallen star, I’ve also been cautioned by my fellow gays active in politics about what to expect from the LGBTQ public. Where was I, they will ask, when I was in a position to help advance issues important to gay Americans? 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. 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.

Former Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL)

Throughout Rep. Schock’s career in the House of Representatives, he frequently voted with the traditional anti-LGBTQ platform of the Republican party. In fact, he had a 0% rating with the Human Rights Campaign during his time in office. He voted against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, amending federal hate crime legislation to include violence against sexual and gender minorities, and opposed gay marriage. To be honest, I understand all of his thinking. When you don’t want someone to think you’re gay, you do everything you can to throw people off your scent. However, there’s one thing I don’t see in this whole letter: an apology.

Schock didn’t apologize for his previous backwards views. He acknowledges that they were wrong, but instead of apologizing for his past views, he says that everyone thought that way and that he shouldn’t be judged for his past views. Girl, that ain’t how this works. Other people have since apologized for their previous thoughts on gay marriage and LGBTQ equality. Coming out of the closet doesn’t absolve you of the wrong you did.

The Queen says it best…

This opinion has been the consensus of a lot of people. Articles in New York Daily News, The Daily Beast, and The Guardian voiced their disapproval at the non-apology. Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness posted a message on their Instagram calling out his hypocrisy, too. Finally, GLADD posted a tweet with their take on the announcement.

The good news for Aaron Schock? It’s not too late. You can’t change what you’ve already done, but you can apologize for it. You can now work to move LGBTQ rights forward. Use the personality, drive, and dedication you had to become the youngest member of Congress at the time of your first election to advance queer rights and protect those who are the most in danger right now: racial, sexual, and gender minorities. However, there is another person who will not be able to recover from their scandal that came out this past week.

Former Drag Race Contestant Sherry Pie

Sherry Pie, a contestant on the current season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, was disqualified from this season after she admitted to catfishing several actors and forcing them to do degrading acts for auditions for fake movie projects. Catfishing, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, is posing as a person other than yourself online in order to gain the trust of another individual. Sherry Pie, whose real name is Joey Gugliemelli, posed as a casting agent and convinced five actors to film videos of them reading fake scripts, perform degrading acts, and even had an actor perform a lewd sexual act on himself on camera. These allegations were brought to light after Sherry Pie was announced as a contestant on this season of Drag Race. After the allegations were revealed, Gugliemelli issued this statement via his Facebook page:

This is Joey, I want to start by saying how sorry I am that I caused such trauma and pain and how horribly embarrassed and disgusted I am with myself. I know that the pain and hurt that I have caused will never go away and I know that what I did was wrong and truly cruel. Until being on RuPaul’s Drag Race, I never really understood how much my mental health and taking care of things meant. I learned on that show how important “loving yourself” is and I don’t think I have ever loved myself. I have been seeking help and receiving treatment since coming back to NYC. I truly apologize to everyone I have hurt with my actions. I also want to say how sorry I am to my sisters of season 12 and honestly the whole network and production company. All I can do is change the behavior and that starts with me and doing that work.

While he does say he’s sorry, the statement says he’s sorry for the pain he caused, not for the actual things he did. In essence, he’s sorry he got caught. What Gugliemelli did was despicable and reprehensible. I’m all for mental health too, but I have mental health issues and have not thought of catfishing people to make them do embarrassing or humiliating things. Using your mental health issues is not an excuse. How do we, or can we even forgive them?

Last year, I wrote about the need to forgive Jussie Smollett when he faked his homophobic attack in Chicago. I talked about the need to give victims the benefit of the doubt, to tamper emotions, and to extend grace to Smollett. Some of that wisdom still applies to these two situations. I think that wishing harm or dangerous things to befall Schock or Gugliemelli is inappropriate and wrong. They’re still human beings, even if they do not act as good as human beings can act.

In Matthew 10, Jesus gives his apostles some very good advice, as he is wont to do. He is sending them out to proclaim the Gospel to Israelites, and tells them this in verse 16:

See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

I interpret this as saying that you assume the good in people, but don’t let your guard down when it comes to your health and safety. I choose to assume that people are good, but I’m not going to let a stranger watch my house. It’s also interesting to see the animal choices that Jesus makes in this verse. The serpent is classically used to portray the devil in the Garden of Eden in Genesis. A dove was used multiple times to indicate God’s presence, like after the great flood and when Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, the spirit “descended like a dove” onto Jesus.

With these two men, I want to forgive, but never forget. Forgiveness is a not a declaration of innocence. It also doesn’t wipe their slates clean either. People have been harmed and wounded because of these two men’s actions. I wouldn’t blame the people hurt by Gugliemelli’s actions if they never forgive him. I don’t blame the LGBTQ community for not forgetting Rep. Schock’s terrible voting record. Forgiveness is often in spite of what’s been done. Forgiveness is meant to help the victims more than the perpetrator.

Whenever someone hurts me or doesn’t treat me or value me like I believe I deserve to be, I still forgive them. God has forgiven me for my sins and wrongdoings, and my faith compels me to do the same. However, I don’t forget how someone has treated me. Because of that, I distance myself from them or tamper my expectations. Just because I forgive you, doesn’t mean I want to be hurt again.

I want to believe that these two men can still live healthy and productive lives. They may not be the lives they intended to have or wanted to have, but they still deserve the chance of having a good life. I don’t need to hear their apologies to forgive them, but I’m not going to forget that I haven’t heard their apologies either.

Do you think this is a fair assessment of these events? Do you think I’m too lenient or forgiving? I’d love to talk with y’all about this. Thanks for reading and tell your friends!