It's a Schock

You might remember this fellow, Aaron Schock. Just a few years ago, people thought he was the Next Big Deal in Republican circles. Why,  he started buying real estate in high school, took a position on the local school board at 19, became an Illinois legislator at 23, and then took a seat in the U.S. Congress at just 27.

Along the way, he was famous among readers of Men’s Health magazine in 2011 after he posed to pictures showing his well-developed physique, and famous across the country among staunch fiscal conservatives for his eagle-eyed watch- dogging of government spending.

"Eagle-eyed watch-dogging" is the sort of metaphor-mixing that drove many a creative writing instructor to drink.

It goes without saying that he was also a staunch Republican, an opponent of marriage equality, the quaint notion that other people have every right to marry whomever they wish.

If you remember Aaron Schock for anything, it would probably be for the jackpot he found himself in for spending a king's ransom on taxpayer-paid office renovations, as he apparently attempted to have his Capital Hill workplace look like the main shack on "Downton Abbey." His spending on interior deco and lavish air travel ended up costing him his career as a politician; he was out on his asterisk in 2015, awash in a sea of indictments.

And then...last year his extremely religious family saw pictures of him attending that Coachella hippiefest out in California. After that, he was on the way to his family home to come out to his parents, and his mom called him to say don't bother coming home.

He was banned from Easter dinner.

So he came out publicly, which was probably not an easy thing to do, and said that his opposition to gay marriage was just an effort to align himself with the stance of 2008 presidential nominee John McCain.

“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,” Schock says now, adding that if he were back in office now, he “would support LGBTQ rights in every way.”

The only contact he has with family members now is when they write to him trying to interest him in this thing called conversion therapy, where they pray the gay away.

And the flashback?

“Aaron Schock's statement fails to acknowledge the years of hurt that his votes against hate crimes protections, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and more caused LGBTQ Americans,” GLAAD tweeted.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-NY, said that Schock “needs to own up to his misconduct in office & apologize to all who fought (over his opposition) to win him his new found rights," but added that he should be welcomed.

At the end of his post, Schock pays tribute for those who opened the world up for those who just wish to live as they see fit:

“I can live openly now as a gay man because of the extraordinary brave people who had the courage to fight for our rights when I did not,” he said.

I haven't learned all that much as I wander this earth, but one thing I know for sure: that thing that people deny so strenuously usually turns out to be the thing they really want.

Oh, and also that people can love as they wish, and adults should be free to consent to their own choices.