TRANSCRIPT:
Sergio is my older brother, and he and I were pretty close growing up. He was very fond of me, and I was very fond of him. I looked up to him a lot. I really admired him for a lot of his qualities and his hard work and the way he seemed to be, with my family, was very in good communication.
Well, Sergio got together with me for coffee to let me know that, you know, he is opening up to me as gay. And that he is gay and wanted to tell me about that. And my reaction to Sergio telling me that he is gay is that I love him, he’s my brother no matter what, and it doesn’t make me feel any less of him that he’s gay. I completely accepted it. And I was very happy that he told me. I was very warm and loving towards him. And I had just let him tell me all about it without any negativity about it. And it honestly didn’t change anything in my relationship with him. If anything, I felt like he was more honest with me, and I appreciated that.
But, I just observed that he started to cut down on his communication with myself, with our family. He started to distance himself. He started not showing up for things that were really important to me in my family and not even give any reasons why—just started to get more and more far apart from us.
And then, I had this big film premiere coming up, and I, of course, invited him as well as my parents and my sister. And the day of the premiere, you know, my parents and my sister came to it, and he was completely absent and didn’t return my phone calls—didn’t return any of my communication about where he was or why he couldn’t make it. It wasn’t until after the fact that he just brushed off a little bit like, “Sorry, I couldn’t make it.” And didn’t give me any communication about it—it was just, he wasn’t there. He didn’t show up and, you know, that was pretty upsetting because it was like a really big deal. It was, like, a big moment for me, and he just didn’t show up at all.
After that point, when I sat down with him and really tried to, you know, get in touch because he had sent this really long hateful email to me and to my family about us, as a family, and that we’re Scientologists and just very hateful about us being Scientologists, I immediately got together face to face with him.
And I wanted us to have a good relationship. I actually told him, you know, “I want us to have a really good relationship. I want us to be a family—we used to have so much communication and be together so often, and this is really important to me. And if you being gay feels like it’s a problem, I just need you to know, it’s not a problem. And, you know, we can work together to make our relationship like it was before.” And, you know, I feel like that wasn’t getting through to him or something, because he never called me back or texted me back or answered any more of my communication after he told me about that, after that conversation. He just completely isolated from myself and from my family, like he wouldn’t return any communication after that.
And no matter how kind I was, or how kind my father and my mother were to him, or even his friends—he had friends who tried to, you know, help him or be guidance to him or counsel with him but he really pushed everyone out of the picture and pushed everyone aside. And I don’t understand why he wouldn’t just accept our help or our love, because we all loved him and we would continue to love him, no matter what his creed or stance was. But he didn’t want to do that.
And all of this is just a betrayal on his own word and his own mantra that he really pushed with our family—was this closeness, being united, spending the holidays together, being close—it’s just totally going against that. And for me it feels like an ultimate betrayal because that was the example he was setting for such a long time, and now it’s going completely against it.
