Paul Stanley of KISS has responded to backlash against a controversial statement he made criticizing gender affirming healthcare for children. “While my thoughts were clear, my words clearly were not,” his new statement reads. “Most importantly and above all else, I support those struggling with their sexual identity while enduring constant hostility and those whose path leads them to reassignment surgery. It’s hard to fathom the kind of conviction that one must feel to take those steps.”

“A paragraph of two will remain far too short to full coney my thoughts of point of view,” the statement continues,”so I will leave that for another time and place.”

Many criticized Stanley’s original tweet, calling it transphobic, and after Dee Snider of Twisted Sister tweeted in support of it, he had his San Francisco Pride performance cancelled.

The original tweet read, “There is a BIG difference between teaching acceptance and normalizing and even encouraging participating in a lifestyle that confuses young children into questioning their sexual identification as though some sort of game and then parents in some cases allow it. There ARE individuals who as adults may decide reassignment is their needed choice but turning this into a game or parents normalizing it as some sort of natural alternative or believing that because a little boy likes to play dress up in his sister’s clothes or a girl in her brother’s, we should lead them steps further down a path that’s far from the innocnece of what they are doing. With many children who have no real sense of sexuality or sexual experiences caught up in the “fun” of using pronouns and saying what they identify as, some adults mistakenly confuse teaching acceptance with normalizing and encouraging a situation that has been a struggle for those truly affected and have turned it into a sad and dangerous fad.”