Out actor Billy Porter has revealed
that his church told him he would “never be blessed” if he “chose
to be gay.”
Porter is best known for his portrayal
of Pray Tell, a gay man living with HIV, in the FX drama Pose,
which has been renewed for a third season. In 2013, he won a Tony
playing Lola in the Broadway musical Kinky Boots.
Speaking with the Guardian,
Porter was asked, “What is the worst thing anyone's said to you?”
“When I was young,” Porter
answered, “my church community said that I would never be
blessed as long as I chose to be gay. And we all know it's not a
choice.”
Porter, 51, also said that he's “trying
to figure out how to receive unconditional love.”
“That's hard to do when you've never
really had it, so I'm trying to navigate that,” he said.
Porter married husband Adam Smith in
2017.