I can imagine that if you're a kid growing up somewhere, where you might be gay or you think you're gay, but you don't know who else would be ... you become very closeted.

I have 8-year-old twins, and I want them to grow up in a world where they can be anyone they want without any shame, without holding back, without being judged for it.

I was very fortunate. I had a great group of friends in my life, and family, and so I felt a sense of safety and belonging that ... as you grow older, you realize that not everybody does feel that. And there's particular certain groups of kids who always feel like outsiders. But I was very fortunate.

Even though [bullying] doesn't actually raise your stature, it might make you feel that way.

If you feel like you're not where you want to be in your life, rather than step on someone else's, raise your stature.

I think bullying comes from a person's feeling of self-worth, and so what you do is you find out where you are in a totem pole, and you may slide in somewhere in the middle. So you say, "OK, well there's all these other people who I respect and admire, and there's all these people below me, so I'm going to put on them this sense that they're inferior and I'm going to belittle them, and that's going to raise my stature."

I would encourage my children to protect themselves if there's any sort of physical abuse against them. I would definitely go speak to the perpetrator, and if the perpetrator was a child, I'd speak to their parents. But I ... Oh my God, I don't know what I'd do if I was privy to watching my kids being bullied! I would do what any parent would, I'd be like a grizzly bear protecting his cubs.