If somebody walks in to me and says, 'I'm a gay person, I want a job in your office,' I would say that's inappropriate, and they wouldn't be hired because that would mean they are promoting their agenda.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Obviously, no LGBT person should be denied the ability to be who they are because their boss disagrees.
Frankly, if people aren't going to cast me because I'm queer, than I don't want to work with them.
It's kind of a shame that it's even an issue. Not being gay, I can't fully appreciate how complicated that is. In the article, the interviewer asked me, and I said that if I were, I would just say it.
I'm sure other people in the business have considered reasons why they're doing what they're doing, but I do think that if you're gay you have a responsibility to come out.
I was still closeted, but from the day I decided to run for office, knowing that I was gay, I decided that I would, of course, still be closeted but that I would work very hard for gay rights. It would be totally dishonorable, being gay, not to do that. So I had that as kind of a secondary agenda.
They probably realized our interview would do more damage to their pro-'gay' piece - rather than help it.
All over the country, they're reading about me, and the story doesn't center on me being gay. It's just about a gay person who is doing his job.
I'm in a little bit of a different situation, because working in the business that I do and living in the city that I live in, I haven't had a problem with people who are gay. Since I was 10 I've been working alongside them, and some of my best friends are gay.
When I went to lobby Nelson Mandela while the post-apartheid constitution was being drafted, I asked him to endorse making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. I'd been warned that he might giggle if I mentioned homosexuality.
Am I a homophobe? Look, I work in show business. I am awash in gay people, as colleagues and as friends.