Former Republican Rep. Aaron Schock revealed he is gay in a statement shared on social media.
“I am gay. For those who know me and for many who know only of me, this will come as no surprise,” the former Illinois congressman began a lengthy Instagram post on Thursday. “The fact that I am gay is just one of those things in life in need of explicit affirmation, to remove any doubt and to finally validate who I am as a person.”
Schock served in Congress from 2009 until his resignation in 2015 amid reports of campaign finance violations. During that time, he voted against the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and voted in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He also received a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign.
The former lawmaker addressed his voting record in the Thursday post.
“In 2008, as a Republican running in a conservative district, I took the same position on gay marriage held by my party’s nominee,” he said, noting that at that time, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were also against same-sex marriage.
“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,” he added.
In 2017, Schock was indicted on 24 federal charges, including mail and wire fraud, but they were dropped by federal prosecutors last year.
Schock explained in his post that he grew up in a conservative and religious family, where at one point he attended a church that believed watching TV to be a sin. He said that after pictures emerged of him kissing a man at California’s famed Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, his mother told him he “wasn’t welcome at home for Easter.”
“My family had always been my closest friends and biggest supporters, through thick and thin. And I say, not to arouse sympathy, but hopefully, rather, understanding, I felt fairly alone,” he said.
He added he has hope that his family will eventually come around and said his mother recently told him that “if there is anyone special in my life, she wants to meet them.”
“This journey has taught me a valuable lesson: that, whether you are gay or straight, it’s never too late to be authentic and true to yourself,” he said.
