Billy Porter
“I knew then that if I was going to survive, I was going to have to extract myself from that,” the Pose star, who came out in 1985, told the Gay Times of his “violently homophobic” upbringing in a 2019 interview. “I found the arts and I found the theatre, a community that embraced me for who I am, and as I went deeper and deeper into that community, I discovered we were in the middle of a plague and had to fight.” Looking back at his tumultuous childhood, Porter sent a message to his younger self — and anyone else struggling to find acceptance for who they are. “Extract yourself from anything that’s toxic,” he said. “Change the narrative of, ‘I need the love of people, my mother, my father, my family to exist on the planet.’ No! We don’t need acceptance, we don’t need tolerance, we need respect for our humanity. … Everybody’s humanity is valid, even if we don’t understand it or like it.”
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