TBT: One of my all-time favourite interviews, with author Terri McMillan, for The Advocate in 2005. A friend recently asked me if this had been a tough piece to write as a gay man—“unpacking,” in the modern parlance, the use of an anti-gay slur by a beloved novelist, doing it with empathy, professionalism, and the presumption of goodwill as the baseline; and, most importantly, with an honest commitment to the critical importance of context. The truth is, it wasn’t tough at all. In 2005, with social media still in its infancy, the reflexive appetite for outrage, and for the utter destruction of people’s lives and careers because of perceived sins and failings that would be the norm 17 years later, wasn’t yet part of the culture. We still asked lot of questions, and we were beholden to facts. For myself, I welcomed the idea of dialogue with McMillian, not only about language, but the context in which it’s used—in this case by a woman in great pain, feeling deeply betrayed, and under great duress, and who later profoundly regretted using the word. I found McMilllan warm, open, honest, vulnerable, profoundly decent, and certainly no homophobe—that latter impression backed up by her longtime friend, the late Black gay novelist E. Lynn Harris, whom I also interviewed for the piece, who described her as being "like a sister" to him. Indeed, what struck me most about McMillan was how little she needed to do the interview at all: by her own account, her fanbase couldn’t imagine why she was bothered by being called "a homophobe," going so far as to ask her “Who gives a shit what gay people think?” The fact that Terri McMillan was bothered, that she cared what gay people thought, that she was worried she had caused pain, and wanted to explain, made all the difference, and meant everything to me, both as a writer and as a gay man.
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