Thinking of You, Perez Hilton

It’s been a while since I thought of Perez Hilton.

The caustic, gay gossip blogger was a big deal when I started my work at Plugged In—famous for his biting comments, pornographic doodles and outing LGBT celebrities. He was a controversy machine, the center of just as many gossipy stories as he broke.

While I doubt Hilton ever heard of Plugged In, I can pretty much guarantee he would’ve hated our little ministry back in his heyday. And he would’ve let everyone know it.

Now, Hilton’s making headlines again—this time for altogether different reasons.

Shocking the World

On Aug. 4, Hilton seemed to commit an act of self-harm during a TikTok livestream. The 48-year-old blogger has been in the hospital ever since, in serious but stable condition. Hilton’s mother, Teresita Lavandeira, recently petitioned the court for temporary custody of Hilton’s three children while her son recovers.

The usual celebrity outpouring of well-wishes was muted—perhaps predictable, given the blogger’s controversial history. But actor Jared Padalecki was quick to offer his support. The Supernatural star has had his own acknowledged bouts with mental illness, and he offered what kind words he could.

“Hey @PerezHilton. Just wanted to reach out and let you know that you’re in my thoughts,” Padalecki wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “This ‘being human’ is a strange thing. Exhilarating. Exhausting. Fast. Slow. Wonderful…. And… at times… awful. I hope you are trying as best as you can to be kind to yourself right now.”

But on Aug. 9, Padalecki deleted his original post after being informed what Hilton had said and written about Padalecki and others in the past.

To give more detail re: my post wishing someone well…
I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA about his past.
I had heard of him. Obviously.
I had heard that he hadn’t exactly “been kind” to me in the past.
So, my thought is always to give grace and forgiveness to those who may have tried…

— Jared Padalecki (@jarpad) August 9, 2026

I understand Padalecki’s reaction. I understand the real hurt and harm that Hilton has done to others in his career. But I have some other thoughts, too.

The Hardest Thing About Christianity: Forgiveness

The Christian walk is a challenging one. And perhaps its hardest tenant is not its exhortations for us to do good, but how it insists we should love folks who do bad. We’re not just called to love God, but to love those who hurt us. Why? Because God loves us: creations who hurt Him deeply.

“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies,” we read in Luke 6:27, “do good to those who hate you.”

That feels a little crazy, right? Especially in today’s culture, where righteous indignation is second nature and kindness can be treated as weakness. And yet, to love the unlovable is what God calls us to do. When Jesus was crucified—not online or in the court of public opinion, but very literally killed—He asked that His murderers be forgiven: “They know not what they do,” Christ said.

We all struggle with this aspect of love and forgiveness. And if we don’t, maybe we’ve not been wronged very much.

Now, forgiveness doesn’t mean a lack of consequence. Love doesn’t mean acceptance of everything someone says and believes. We still need to hold firm to our convictions and God’s directives. And we still have all sorts of permission to feel hurt and angry: The Bible’s filled with that, too. It doesn’t even mean that we need to let someone who hurt us back into our lives. We can forgive someone without submitting to their influence.

But it does mean that we need to be mindful that God doesn’t grade our sins on a curve, as much as we might want Him to.

We’re all made in God’s image and, as such, hold a hint of His beauty. But we all fall far short: We’re broken and twisted. And when we judge someone else’s sins, we need to mindful of our own—and approach with humility and trepidation.

We also need to be mindful that, until we stop breathing, our mortal stories are still being written. There’s time to change. There’s time to heal. There’s time to make amends.

I think that God is rooting for every single one of us—whoever we are or whatever we’ve done—to accept His sovereignty over our lives, our only way to a happy ending. And as such, we should be rooting for those happy endings, too.

Cliffhanger

Perez Hilton’s story is still being written.

In March, the blogger had a life-threatening medical issue that put him in the hospital for 21 days. But as he encountered his own mortality, he says he also encountered God.

“God presented himself to me and then did something. Something I can only call miraculous,” he said in a video (as reported by Page Six). Later, he posted another video, talking about how he’d been reading his Bible and “crying, but happy tears.” And he said this:

“I made a lot of mistakes in my past. We all have. Nobody’s perfect. But my mistakes are very public. The internet is forever. Receipts are forever. I carry with me deep shame and regret. I’m sorry. I will continue to apologize. I have also reached out to make amends. I’ve apologized publicly and privately to dozens of people. … Because I was so selfish, because I didn’t care who I hurt. I just cared about the views, the attention, the money—people hated me …”

He added, “What matters is today. How I behave today, how I behave tomorrow. And not only did God save me in so many ways, but God gave me a new lease on life and a new opportunity to truly be better and do better.”

Now, five months later, Hilton’s in the hospital again—this time, apparently, by his own hand.

Finding God doesn’t mean that everything gets better, as if by a wave of a magic wand. Maybe sometimes it happens that way. But not always. That hasn’t been my experience.

I—like Hilton and Padalecki—can struggle with mental illness. I know God, but I don’t always feel God in my life. I know that I’m made in the image of God, but sometimes I can feel like a mistake. And that’s pretty hard sometimes.

We’re works in progress, all of us. I can’t and won’t condone what Hilton has said and done in the past. But I’m rooting for him now. I’d be rooting for him even if he hadn’t had that encounter with God. Even if the next thing he wrote was a vulgar scree against Plugged In. Why? Because he bears the image of God, like I do. He has messed up that image something awful, like I have.

And he still has more of his story to write. Like I do.