The singer Ne-Yo apologized this week after questioning gender transition for children, to which I said that parents should always question such practices. To his credit, Ne-Yo backtracked yesterday’s apology in a new Instagram video. This is an opinion he “feels very strongly about,” the father of seven said. “I need y’all to hear it from the horse’s mouth, not the publicist’s computer”:

First and foremost, I did not apologize for having an opinion on this matter. I am a 43-year-old heterosexual man raising five boys and two girls, okay? That’s my reality.

Now, if my opinion offended somebody, yeah, sure, I apologize for you being offended because that wasn’t my intention. My intention is never to offend anybody. However, I’m entitled to feel how I feel. I am absolutely entitled to feel how I feel the same way you are entitled to feel how you feel . . . Someone asked my opinion on the matter, and this is how I feel: I will never be okay with allowing a child that detrimental to their life.

Ne-Yo said he plans to educate himself on the matter (as he said in yesterday’s statement), but that he doubts there is “any book or any opinion that somebody’s going to tell me that’s going to make me ok with letting a child make a decision like that”:

If I get canceled for this, then, you know what, maybe this is a world where they don’t need a Ne-Yo no more. And I ain’t got no problem with that. I’m a hustler, alright? I’ll figure it out.

Celebrities who value parenting more than the world’s opinion are rare. Bravo, Ne-Yo.