Aaron Schock has come out as gay.

The former Illinois congressman penned a lengthy coming-out letter to the public, which was posted Thursday to Instagram as well as his website.

In the letter, Schock expressed "regret" for not coming out sooner and detailed "a difficult and ultimately, now optimistic, journey familiar to many LGBTQ people." This included being raised in a conservative religious household and, once arriving in Washington, D.C., at age 27, putting "my ambition over the truth, which not only hurt me, but others as well."

Schock also expressed no love for the media; he saw the frequent references of his Downton Abbey fandom, which he debunked as false, as "a dog whistle" about his being a closeted gay man.

Any "opportunity [to come out] quickly vanished," Schock said after a federal investigation began over whether he diverted government and campaign funds to his personal use, including mileage reimbursements, interior decorating of his Washington office, and a charter flight to a sports game in Chicago. Schock resigned from his office in 2015.

"Thinking I was out of the political spotlight made me much less worried about others knowing that I was gay," he wrote. "I truly wanted to tell my family and felt ready to do so, starting with Mom and Dad. But just as I felt comfortable enough to come out, government prosecutors weaponized questions about my personal life and used innuendo in an attempt to cast me as a person of deceptive habit and questionable character. My family, friends, and former employees were subpoenaed and asked prying questions about my personal and dating life."

Federal prosecutors ultimately agreed to drop charges against Schock in 2019 — if he agreed to pay back money owed to the Internal Revenue Service and his campaign fund.

Schock said that, after the investigation ended, he was getting ready to come out to his family. However, photographs of the former politician posing with a group of gay men in Coachella made headlines in April of that year, as well as a video of what appeared to be Schock being intimate with another man. His mother did not receive the news well. "She told me to turn around and go back to LA. I wasn’t welcome at home for Easter," he wrote.

"To characterize some of these conversations with my family in general, it’s fair to say it has not been a case of instant acceptance and understanding," Schock stated. "What I had to share was unwelcome news to every single person in my family, out of the blue in some cases, and was met with sadness, disappointment, and unsympathetic citations to Scripture."

"It hurt to hear all this, to say the least," he continued. "What I had feared from many of them had come to pass. 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."

Even today, Schock is working on finding acceptance with his family and feels "at times like my mother’s fallen star." Several members have contacted him and urged conversion therapy, the discredited practice of trying to turn a gay person straight.

Rightly, Schock also considered the response to his coming-out by the "LGBTQ public" in his letter. While in office, which he entered in 2009, Schock was a vocal opponent of LGBTQ equality. He received a 0 rating from the Human Rights Campaign in his first term, during which he voted against including sexual orientation in federal hate-crimes legislation and opposed efforts to repeal of the military's ban on out LGB service members known as "don't ask, don't tell." He was also a vocal critic of the Obama administration's decision to stop defending the so-called Defense of Marriage Act in February 2011.

"Where was I, they will ask, when I was in a position to help advance issues important to gay Americans?" he wrote in the letter. In justifying some of his former views as a politician, he pointed out that John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama were all opposed to marriage equality at the time.

"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 stated.

"The truth is that if I were in Congress today, I would support LGBTQ rights in every way I could," he added. "I realize that some of my political positions run very much counter to the mainstream of the LGBTQ movement, and I respect them for those differences. I hope people will allow for me the same."

Schock concluded his letter with the hope that his story will help young people coming out — as well as parents in finding acceptance for their children. "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 stated.

He noted with "optimism" how his mother told him at a recent family gathering that she was open to meeting "anyone special in my life."

Read the full text below: