#LoveMakeShare catchup for June 22: They say “never meet your heroes.” Is there a creative influence on you whose legacy has soured, or at least become complicated? What has that complication done for you?

Gene Roddenberry is waaaay more complicated than any Star Trek fan wants him to be.

The Trek creator, I think, had his heart in the right place. I will often cite two things he said. First:

"If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear."

Hard to argue with that.

And second, once he was confronted by a fan at a convention who subscribed to the "ancient aliens" conspiracy theory about the pyramids. Roddenberry took the fan to task. "No, *we* did that," he said. "Human beings can do these things, because we're clever, and we work hard."

When you pair the impact Star Trek and its idealistic secular humanism has had on my life, and moments like that, it's an uphill battle to acknowledge the stuff that's come to light about the man over the last twenty years or so.

But the man was, by all accounts, a bad husband, a bad father, a bad boss, a bad collaborator, an addict, a bad friend, and an abuser, not necessarily in that order.

It's important to learn from people's stories, but Roddenberry really shook my idea of having "heroes."