Cookie Johnson Tells Oprah She Struggled To Accept Son EJ Coming Out As Gay

Cookie Johnson, wife of basketball great Magic Johnson, opens up to Oprah Winfrey, in a preview clip from an upcoming episode of Super Soul Sunday, about her struggled to accept her son EJ Johnson coming out as gay.

“You’re Christian, you believe in the word, you live by the word. How did you reconcile what Christianity says about being gay with your loving of your son, and still remaining Christian?” Winfrey asks Johnson.

Related: NCAA College Star Derrick Gordon Says NBA Didn’t Give Him A Shot Because He’s Gay 

“That was a very hard thing for me,” she admits. “That was a very, very hard thing for me. I tried everything, but finally I just said to myself, ‘This child is innocent. He was like this when he was a baby. It can’t be wrong. It can’t be wrong.”

“I had to pray about it,” she adds. “This was one of those moments where I had to go directly to God and I prayed…and the answer I got back was love. And He said, ‘I give you all great gifts and the greatest of that gift is love.’ And so, that’s when I knew I could love my son and support him on who he was, and I was okay with it…I made peace with God with it. So I’m good.”

Related: Cookie Johnson Says It Was Important For Gay Son To Know He Had His Parents’ Support 

Super Soul Sunday airs Sundays, 11 a.m. ET, on OWN. Watch video previews below.

In 2014, EJ presented his parents with the HRC Upstander Award:

www.queerty.com/cookie-johnson-tells-oprah-struggled-accept-son-ej-coming-gay-20160923?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Donald Rumsfeld, 84, Says George HW Bush, 92, is Voting for Clinton Because ‘He’s Up in Years’ — WATCH

Donald Rumsfeld suggested that the reason President George H.W. Bush has decided that he’s voting for Hillary Clinton is because he’s old (senile?).

RELATED: President George H. W. Bush Will Vote for Hillary Clinton, According to a Kennedy

“He’s up in years,” said the former Defense Secretary, when asked about #41’s decision.

The Hill reports:

Bush is 92, and Rumsfeld is 84.

Rumsfeld offered the same response about Bush “getting up in years” when pushing back last year at criticism from the former Republican president over Rumsfeld’s service in the George W. Bush administration.

“He gets his choice, and if that’s true, he’s made his choice. Then, fine, he can go do what he wants to do,” Rumsfeld said of the elder Bush supporting Clinton over Trump.

Watch:

Full interview:

The post Donald Rumsfeld, 84, Says George HW Bush, 92, is Voting for Clinton Because ‘He’s Up in Years’ — WATCH appeared first on Towleroad.

Donald Rumsfeld, 84, Says George HW Bush, 92, is Voting for Clinton Because ‘He’s Up in Years’ — WATCH

Does Finding Prince Charming’s Robert Sepulveda, Jr. Have a Case Against His Cyberbullies?

In an Instagram post, Robert Sepulveda, Jr., the star of Logo TV’s Finding Prince Charming, threatened to sue “cyberbullies” for shaming him online about his escort past.

He wrote:

Targeted harassment, shaming and bullying is wrong and against the law – it doesn’t matter the age! Listen closely folks, if you come for me, we will come for you and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. BULLYING IS WRONG!
It says more about you and your own insecurities then the people you are bullying. Bullying, shaming and targeted harassment has effects on REAL people and REAL lives. And if you support these people or their actions then you are part of the problem.
In the beautiful words of Martin Luther King: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” and on that note….come for me – you’ll be hearing from my attorneys.
#BullyingIsWrong #lovewins

Does he have a case?

For the moment, let’s set aside the fact that Mr. Sepulveda doesn’t appear to understand the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote he appended to his message. Threatening legal action “on that note” of love and compassion strains “the little grey cells,” as Poirot would say. But his post raises several questions: What happened? And does he have any legal action against his alleged harassers?

Here’s what we know. Before the “Finding Prince Charming” premiere, various online outlets reported that Mr. Sepulveda had been an escort.

Some websites called him a former “sex worker”. A gay-oriented celebrity gossip website then unearthed and published graphic photos of Mr. Sepulveda from his days as an escort. This apparently resulted in a flurry of online shaming and ridicule: some trolls shamed him for being an escort, some attacked him for how terrible his show is, and others just appeared to be jealous about his statuesque physique (if that’s your thing).

I couldn’t find any evidence of his life being threatened, of him being attacked for his sexuality, of any cyberstalkers, or of any extortion threats. Nor could I find evidence of doxing (the publication of personal information online) or the misuse of his information for threatening or intimidating purposes. He was shamed for being an escort, something he has put behind him anyway, if it ever was something we should be shaming.

Given that, his attorneys have limited options. The online publication of intimate or graphic photos of another without his or her consent is called “nonconsensual pornography,” more commonly, but incorrectly known as “revenge porn.” It is a crime in 35 jurisdictions and counting. The original website unpublished the photos, but anyone who may have downloaded them and publishes them again could be prosecuted in jurisdictions with criminal revenge porn laws. California is one of them.

RELATED: ‘Finding Prince Charming’ Star Robert Sepúlveda Jr. Threatens to Sue Online Bullies

But it is not clear on what basis Mr. Sepulveda’s trolls will be “hearing from” his attorneys. The tort of defamation, when it comes to celebrities, is pretty narrow. It requires that the information being peddled by his defamers be false; but Mr. Sepulveda actually was an escort. He has admitted as much.

Nor is he a victim of “cyberbullies,” as he names his attackers.

Definitions are important. There are a host of definitions of “cyberharassment” or “cyberbullying” milling around. And imprecise and inconsistent definitions frustrate our ability to understand, talk about, and solve the problem.

Danielle Citron, the leading cyberhate and harassment scholar, defines cyberharassment generally as repeated online expression that intentionally targets a particular person and causes the targeted individual substantial emotional distress and/or the fear of bodily harm.

There are five core elements to that definition: repetition, use of digital technology, intent, targeting, and substantiality of harm.

Cyberbullying is a subcategory of cyberharassment that includes all five of those elements but is focused squarely on youth-to-youth behavior. It can be understood as repeated online expression that is intended to cause substantial harm by one youth or group of youths targeting another with an observed or perceived power imbalance. This definition retains those five factors and adds two important elements: youth and power imbalance, the latter of which is actually common in many forms of cyberharassment.

The asymmetry of power, which could be physical (i.e., an athlete attacking a non-athlete), psychological (i.e., a popular student attacking someone with low self-esteem), or based on identity (i.e., a member of the majority attacking a member of a traditionally marginalized and discriminated minority), draws the line between schoolyard teasing and bullying.

It should come as no surprise, then, that young members of the LGBTQ community are uniquely susceptible to bullying and its tragic consequences. They are bullied because they deviate from the norm and because anti-gay bullying is either tacitly or explicitly condoned by anti-gay bigotry in society at large. This definition of cyberbullying captures the worst online aggressive behavior while excluding the otherwise mean, hateful, and distasteful speech that free speech norms tend to tolerate.

RELATED: ‘Revenge Porn’ and Finding Prince Charming’s Robert Sepulveda Jr.

Cyberbullying is, at bottom, cyberharassment involving youth. And it is an epidemic affecting our schools. Most state statutes about cyberbullying reflect this definition.

Mr. Sepulveda has been on the receiving end of unfortunate shaming. We shouldn’t take it upon ourselves to stand in judgment of his choices, as if we have always made perfect ones. But I have found no evidence that Mr. Sepulveda’s attackers have put him in fear for his safety or caused him substantial emotional harm.

The internet can be a terribly uncomfortable, angry, and unsafe place. But we minimize the real victims of cyberharassment–those women targeted by Gamergate who have had to leave their homes because attempted rapists show up at their doors; those members of marginalized groups who have had to silence themselves to protect their toddler-aged children from online death threats; and those adolescents who would rather kill themselves than show up at school or open Facebook again–when we call every hateful comment an incident of “cyberbullying.”

If we lumped together every unfortunate comment online and try to carve out legal responses to stop them, we endanger important free speech values.

By merely putting himself on television, Mr. Sepulveda should not have to deal with the jealousy, animosity, and public shaming from trolls about his escort past. Some state criminal and civil laws may be able to address the publication of his graphic photos without consent. But without more evidence about what happened to him online, his lawyers do not have many options to address the accompanying shaming.

It has to be this way.

The post Does Finding Prince Charming’s Robert Sepulveda, Jr. Have a Case Against His Cyberbullies? appeared first on Towleroad.

Does Finding Prince Charming’s Robert Sepulveda, Jr. Have a Legal Case Against His “Cyberbullies”?

Frontline Doc Examines the Night President Obama Utterly Humiliated Donald Trump: WATCH

A new Frontline documentary airing next week examines the night that President Obama utterly humiliated Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner and, Trump advocates say, drove him to run for president.

The documentary features Roger Stone, Trump’s former chief political advisor, longtime friend and conservative extremist ally who heads a Trump SuperPAC and pals around with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Says Stone in the preview: “I think that is the night he resolves to run for president. I think that he is kind of motivated by it. ‘Maybe I’ll just run. Maybe I’ll show them all.’”

Also featured in the documentary is Omarosa Manigault, the former Apprentice contestant, who looks as if she’s doing everything to hold back from letting out a wicked cackle: “Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”

Watch:

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Frontline Doc Examines the Night President Obama Utterly Humiliated Donald Trump: WATCH

Are You on the List? (Photos)

www.advocate.com/photography/2016/9/23/are-you-list-photos

SoCal Beach Cities Celebrate at South Bay Pride (Photos)

www.advocate.com/pride/2016/9/23/socal-beach-cities-celebrate-south-bay-pride-photos