The Atlantic

A Bad Time to Come Out

After years of silence on his sexual orientation, Kevin Spacey issued a bizarre statement on “choosing to live as a gay man” while apologizing for alleged child molestation.
Source: Michael Zorn/Invision/AP

Late Sunday night, the comedian Billy Eichner wrote on Twitter, “Kevin Spacey has just invented something that has never existed before: a bad time to come out.”

After years of declining to talk about his sexual orientation, Spacey hurled it out in no uncertain terms as part of a public statement: “I choose now to live as a gay man.”

Eyebrows may have been raised by the contentious phrasing—the history of the idea in sexual orientation being loaded. But many eyebrows were already fully raised by the fact that this sentence came after a half-apology for an alleged 1986 child molestation.

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