Transcript of Youtube Statement (as copied, verbatim, from reddit user u/Siha):
A note on the transcription:
* punctuation choices are mine, based on what I felt best represented the speaking/reading of the Goulets.
* I have removed all the usual ums and ahs of speech, but otherwise have not edited the words at all.
* I’ve listened back to this twice to confirm I got it right, but any errors are on me. Please assume any inaccuracies are due to either typos, or hearing the words incorrectly.
Hey everybody, just wanted to come to you today with a personal message from Rachel and myself. I wanted to say a few words to our longtime supporters and fellow pen enthusiasts. We prepared some notes here so please forgive us if we’re glancing down, we wanted to be really intentional about the words that we use.
So last week we were made aware of some really troubling concerns in our community related to some pretty serious misconceptions and inaccurate rumors that were circulating on social media. To be honest, this has been a pretty confusing and very emotional week for many of you, for our team, for our family, ourselves, and we just wanted to clarify a few of these things that we feel are incredibly important, both for ourselves as well as Goulet Pens.
So as many of you may already know and maybe some of you don’t, there’s been some extensive discussion raised online regarding the nature of Rachel and I’s personal faith and a question about a new local church that we started attending very recently. This church was founded with the help of a more established congregation in our area and someone associated with that separate congregation recently spoke on a podcast about their views regarding the LGBTQ+ community. Just to be clear, these are not words that we said, these were something that we weren’t even aware of and we were totally shocked by the messaging. Rachel and I only want to spread love and we would never judge someone for who they are. We simply do not agree with anyone who does. We firmly believe that all people should be treated with dignity, compassion and love, and be embraced for who they are, and that absolutely includes the LGBTQ+ community.
When we first heard that information about our family and our recent attendance at a local church was being posted online, our immediate concern was the safety of our family. Then as we started to look deeper into the situation we saw there were accusations of hate speech toward the LGBTQ+ community being mentioned in connection to a podcast. Honestly we had no idea what was happening; we were completely unaware of the podcast, we’d never listened to it or heard about it and we never even heard anything even remotely close to this kind of message before at church. As we continued to try to piece together the allegations being made and where they were coming from, countless – so many – posts and comments continued to crop up across different social media platforms online. It was a frenzy and it came in faster than we could keep up with. As we didn’t know exactly what was being said or why, we wanted to wait to respond until we had a full understanding of the whole picture.
We recognise an official statement denouncing hate and discrimination was expected sooner from us; we saw comments about that online. Totally fair, right? There are even accusations that our delayed response was some kind of agreement with these claims. [indistinct] we intended to record this video days ago, but as private information was being shared about our family online throughout the week and the attacks online were just so aggressive, we were totally overwhelmed and really concerned about the safety of our family. It’s not an excuse, I totally understand that, but it is at least an explanation as to why we needed to understand more of what was going on. We understand, we apologise to anyone who took our delay to be a sign of our agreement with the claims and the sentiments being made, but nothing could be further from the truth. We believe in love, acceptance, inclusion and respect for everyone in all walks of life. We spent this week engaging in hours and hours of conversation within our team, within our church, our family and others to really get an understanding of the issues and the concerns being shared. It was a confusing and very upsetting situation but we really take to heart the hurt that many in our communities have experienced in their lives and we don’t want anything that we do to contribute to more hurt in any way.
We recognise that for many people, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community, this has been a painful and difficult experience. We know that feeling hurt or betrayed by people and a brand you care about is tough and we’re truly sorry that any of our actions have caused you pain. We do want to make it as clear as we can, as both Brian and Rachel Goulet and on behalf of our company Goulet Pens, we denounce any form of discrimination, hate or exclusion, whether it’s based on sexual orientation, race, religion or any other factor. Our stance has always been one of inclusivity; it’s who we are, it’s who we’ve been, that will never change. The way we make people feel matters to us, and we only want people to feel welcome and included in our community. Brian and I are having ongoing conversations with each other, within our company and within our church community to ensure that we all do our part to continue fostering a safe and welcoming environment for every member of the community, customers and employees alike.
We’ve also seen some comments out there suggesting that this situation is somehow related to Drew’s recent departure. That simply is just not the case, I want to clear that up right now. There’s zero connection between any of these recent concerns online and his leaving; these are just more false rumours and hurtful online gossip that’s been swirling around. His leaving had nothing to do with anything related to sexual orientation, political beliefs, religious beliefs or anything of the sort. We’ve only ever wanted the best for Drew; we really love him and care about him and just want to see him have happiness and success.
So I guess to wrap things up, we really do truly appreciate every one of you. We see you, we love you, we accept you, we welcome you.
We just hope that moving forward that we can continue to reflect the inclusive, welcoming and supportive values that we all have. Who we are, who we’ve been and how we’ve run our company for the last fifteen years has not changed. Just want to thank you so much for taking the time to listen. We love you all.
