Speaking with Vanity Fair for their September issue, out actor Billy Porter said that “Black queer people are Black first.”

Porter is best known for playing Pray Tell, a gay man who is HIV-positive, on the FX drama Pose.

Porter is among the 22 activists and visionaries featured in a segment titled “You Said Hope.”

(Related: Indya Moore on Trump's attacks on the transgender community.)

Porter said that the “public lynching of George Floyd galvanized people all over the world to rise up, once again for equality and justice.”

“This moment,” Porter said, “has lit a fire inside of me and truly thrusted me into using my platform to deliver the message [that] Black queer people are Black first. Queer second. Our queerness is not a 'choice.' It is who we are and we will no longer be silenced. None of us are free until we all are free.”

“The reason why our country is in the mess we’re in is simply because of whiteness,” Porter continued. “White supremacy. White people choke-holding power and sucking the life out of humanity. Orangina 45, that cancer that is in our White House, has been handed the power, without consequence, to have his hate metastasize all over the people. Why are we not talking about figuring out how to remove this monster from the highest office in the land right now! ’Cause we might not be alive come November. And this is not hyperbole.”