Q&A: Irish Musician Hozier on Gay Rights, Sexuality, & Good Hair

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• It references the very organized attacks against LGBT youths that are carried out with impunity, without action from law enforcement.

• “cultural landscape that is blatantly homophobic,” and a strong statement about the institutional homophobia in Putin’s Russia.

• Blues is a very physical music. It’s often about sex, whether it’s through innuendo or not.

• But an organization like the church, say, through its doctrine, would undermine humanity by successfully teaching shame about sexual orientation

• The song is about asserting yourself and reclaiming your humanity through an act of love. Turning your back on the theoretical thing, something that’s not tangible, and choosing to worship or love something that is tangible and real — something that can be experienced.

• it’s an assertion of self, reclaiming humanity back for something that is the most natural and worthwhile.

• It’s people carrying out terrible acts through the justification of far-right traditionalism, and also a long campaign to make homosexuality equivalent with things like pedophilia and bestiality, which is absolutely appalling.

• “We love the sinner, but we hate the sin.”

• We have civil partnerships, but we don’t have equal marriage.

• Either somebody has equal rights, or they don’t. And certainly in the Irish constitution, marriage is genderless

• You have to recognize in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it.

• I suppose it’s about feeling liberation … and a woman whose references might be questionable at best.

• he woman in the lyrics is positioned as more of an anti-savior.