There was certainly nothing really sexual about my youth growing up, simply because the fact remains if you're the fat kid in a school and I was the only fat black kid in the school - in fact, I was the only black kid in the school - but if you are kind of ostracized on many different levels in your school the last thing you're worried about is sex.

You can't be a part-time man of principle.

We need to accept that some people are camp and some people are butch. Some people are pretty and some people are average, but we all fit.

I think it's too easy to just say that there is a direct and necessary conflict between black identity and gay identity. I think it's more nuanced than that simply because I think black is a color and then people layer on top of it all kinds of socio-cultural elements.

My particular interest area is working in issues of emotional literacy. What I see of the way that we educate boys and more than that, the way we socialize boys within their families and then in schools to me is tantamount to just removing any element of emotional intelligence from them.

In a country like America, there are places, many states here still where coming out means you lose your job, where coming out means division, where it means potentially abuse.

Knowing yourself, knowing where you want to get, combining those things gives you the pragmatic steps.