‘Extra’ Producers Weren’t Happy About Mario Lopez Trashing the Parents of Transgender Kids
Mario Lopez on Wednesday apologized after remarks he made last month about transgender kids and their parents were brought to light.
Said Lopez in a statement: “The comments I made were ignorant and insensitive, and I now have a deeper understanding of how hurtful they were. I have been and always will be an ardent supporter of the LGBTQ community, and I am going to use this opportunity to better educate myself. Moving forward I will be more informed and thoughtful.”
Lopez also missed the latest taping of Extra, which he hosts, Deadline reports: “No explanation was given for Lopez’s absence from today’s show, although Extrahosts Renee Bargh and Tanika Ray addressed the controversy by interviewing GLAAD director Anthony Ramos and Dr Johanna Olson Kennedy, an expert on trans youth development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.”
Extra producers also released a statement: “While we have enjoyed a long relationship with Mario Lopez, who we know to be a caring person, the opinions he expressed in this interview do not reflect those of Extra. We wholeheartedly embrace our friends from the LGBTQ community and believe they need support and love. For more support on these issues you can go to GLAAD.org.”
Lopez made the remarks in an interview with pro-Trump conservative Candace Owens.
Owens brought up what she said was a “weird trend” of celebrities acknowledging their child’s gender identity, citing Charlize Theron as an example.
Said Owens: “I’ve had children say they were mermaids. I’ve had children say they could fly. I am trying to understand this new Hollywood mentality where they just think their children now have the mental authority and clarity…”
Lopez agreed: “I am trying to understand it myself, and please don’t lump me into that whole [group of celebs]. I’m kind of blown away too. Look, I’m never one to tell anyone how to parent their kids obviously and I think if you come from a place of love, you really can’t go wrong but at the same time, my God, if you’re three years old and you’re saying you’re feeling a certain way or you think you’re a boy or a girl or whatever the case may be, I just think it’s dangerous as a parent to make that determination then, well, ‘OK, then you’re going to be a boy or girl,’ whatever the case may be … It’s sort of alarming and my gosh, I just think about the repercussions later on..”
“To me I just see depression,” added Owens. “You can’t make a decision about your sexuality when you’re three years old.”
“When you’re a kid … you don’t know anything about sexuality yet,” Lopez agreed. “You’re just a kid.”
Owens accused celebs like Theron of “narcissism” and “virtue signaling” for respecting their kids’ gender identities.
Added Lopez: “I think parents need to allow their kids to be kids but at the same time, you gotta be the adult in the situation. Pause with that and — I think the formative years is when you start having those discussions and really start making these ‘declarations.’”
Homophobic rugby player wants $10 million AND his old job back
Disgraced rugby player Israel Folau has officially filed a $10 million lawsuit against Rugby Australia after the organization fired him earlier this year for spewing off all sorts of homophobic nonsense on social media.
In the lawsuit, Folau, who had been one of Australia’s highest-paid athletes before his epic fall from grace, argues that his contract was unlawfully terminated due to his Christian beliefs.
But Australian rugby officials maintain that Folau breached a players’ code of conduct by violating its code on “respectful use of social media.” According to the code, players must “treat everyone equally, fairly and with dignity regardless of gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, cultural or religious background, age or disability.”
Prior to having his contract terminated, Folau repeatedly used social media to say LGBTQ people were going to hell, bash trans people, rant about the White House being lit up in rainbow colors, and share videos of hateful sermons by homophobic preachers.
Folau crowdfunded $2 million with the help of the Australian Christian Lobby, a Christian extremist political lobbying group, to pay for his legal expenses. Now, he wants $10 million in compensation from Ruby Australia ($6 million more than the four-year contract he was released from) plus his job back.
Folau has said in the past that he would rather walk away from rugby than defy the Bible. Unless, evidently, there’s $10 million involved.
‘One Million Moms’ Attacks Whole Foods for Sponsoring Drag Queen Story Hour ‘to Indoctrinate Children into Transgenderism and Homosexuality’
American Family Association’s shrieking harpy contingent One Million Moms has launched a boycott of Whole Foods Market for sponsoring a Drag Queen Story Hour earlier this summer.
— City of Atlanta, GA (@CityofAtlanta) June 29, 2019
Wrote OMM: ‘A retailer that once promoted organics and clean food is now saturated in absolute filth, exploiting America’s children to be “groomed” by drag queens. Whole Foods Market is now sponsoring a Drag Queen Story Hour event to indoctrinate children into transgenderism and homosexuality. Their goal is to normalize the LGBTQ lifestyle. Drag Queen Story Hour has been endorsed by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is obviously signaling her support for transgenderism and homosexuality in order to appease the Left.’
The group, led by pearl-clutching mom behind a computer Monica Cole, accuses the grocery retailer of “supporting child exploitation” for sponsoring the event, which was moved to City Hall at the invitation of Bottoms after it was canceled at the library.
3 homophobes who attacked a man with a hammer avoid jail time because of their kids
Three sisters around age 30 shouted homophobic slurs at a man while one of them attacked him with a hammer. But a judge has let the sisters avoid jail because “it was in the best interests of their children for them not to serve prison sentences.”
The hell?
It’s a little complicated, but stay with us.
On August 11, 2018, Louise, Leanne and Samantha Whelan (ages 29, 32 and 33, respectively) were driving to their mother’s house when they saw Katie Cunningham, the new girlfriend of Samantha’s baby-daddy, Thomas Carson, on the street. Cunningham was visiting the house of Carson’s mother, Deborah McKenna.
Samantha grabbed a hammer and threatened Cunningham, and Cunningham ran inside of McKenna’s house. When Peter Taylor, a friend of McKenna’s, heard a commotion at the front of the house, he went to investigate.
The sisters were shouting for McKenna and Cunningham to come outside of the house. And when Taylor told them to calm down, Samantha allegedly said, “F*ck off, we don’t want you.”
When Taylor refused to leave, Leanne reportedly swung the hammer at him and missed. All three women began shouting homophobic slurs at him.
Although the hammer never connected with Taylor’s actual body, he said the attack left him “feeling depressed and anxious, ‘looking over his shoulder all the time’ and struggling to sleep at night,” according to the Liverpool Echo
The sisters all have previous criminal records for assault. Leanne has three assault charges including one for assaulting a police officer and one for assault causing bodily harm. Louise has a charge for “racially aggravated harassment against a supermarket security guard,” and Samantha was charged in the past for battery and assaulting a police officer.
All three women also have kids between seven months and 14 years of age. Because of this, the judge in this case said all three women should avoid jail time, lest it have a bad effect on their kids.
Instead, the judge gave them each a three-month curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily, 20 days in a rehab program and a five-year restraining order to leave Taylor and McKenna alone.
The three women were seen laughing and smoking outside of the courtroom after their sentences were handed down.
The idea of paying reparations for slavery is gaining momentum in the United States, despite being long derided as an unrealistic plan, to compensate for state violence committed by and against people long dead.
Calls for reparations in the U.S. are generally met with skepticism: What would reparations achieve? Who should receive them, and under what conditions?
Other countries have tackled these questions. In 1995, South Africa established its Truth and Reconciliation Commission and paid reparations to the victims of apartheid. Eight years before, the United States apologized to 82,000 Japanese Americans unduly imprisoned during World War II and paid them US$20,000 each to compensate for their suffering.
Even Germany, birthplace of the worst racism ever institutionalized and elevated to official policy, has some lessons for the United States as it considers reparations.
Nazi Germany not only killed millions of Jews between 1933 and 1945. It also forced over 20 million people into slave labor, working them to their death in German industries. By 1944, a quarter of the German workforce was enslaved laborers.
After Hitler’s defeat in World War II, the newly democratic government of West Germany knew it had to face the evils of the past.
Nazi industries that used slave labor, such as the steel and artillery producer Krupp, were dismantled. High-ranking Krupp CEOs were judged war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials and imprisoned.
Assuming the midcentury rate of 4 German marks to $1, that’s the equivalent today of $7 billion for Israel and $1 billion for the Jewish Congress.
Some Germans protested against Adenauer’s support for Israel. Their country was just beginning its economic recovery after the war – a process aided, incidentally, by the U.S.-funded Marshall Plan – and many Germans insisted they had nothing to do with the persecution of the Jews.
In negotiating the German reparations agreement of 1952, Ben-Gurion invoked the biblical question, from Kings 21:29, “Have you murdered and also inherited?”
Germany’s post-war Chancellor Adenauer knew that, for the German people, the answer was yes.
“In the name of the German people, unspeakable crimes were committed which create a duty of moral and material restitution,” he said.
By 1956, the German state was supplying 87.5% of Israel’s state revenue. The young new country used the money to buy equipment and raw materials to build up its industry, railways and electrical grid. Mining equipment, irrigation and fuel were also high on the list of Israel’s reparations-fueled development priorities.
Atonement is a process
Germany’s efforts to atone for the Holocaust were not limited to money.
To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, the 1949 German Constitution – as well as the penal and criminal codes of the country – outlaw the use of symbols that incite hatred against any segment of its population. The Constitution also guarantees asylum to political refugees and all people fleeing war.
In 1952 Germany officially apologized for the Nazis’ crimes, at Israel’s demand.
By 2007, the organization had paid a total of $4.9 billion to 1.66 billion people worldwide who’d been forced into labor and servitude by the Nazis, or to their living descendants – their share of the wealth slavery produced for Germany.
Most recently, the German government in 2013 agreed with the Jewish Claims Conference to pay about $1 billion for the home care of all elderly Holocaust survivors.
As a result of the reparations paid, Germany’s open admission of guilt and the policies it put in place to prevent another Holocaust from occurring, German-Jewish relations have largely normalized since World War II.
Germany’s Jewish population has even begun to recover from genocide. With 150,000 Jewish residents in 2018, Germany is home to Europe’s fourth-largest Jewish community.
Lessons for the United States
Instead of seeking to wipe the Holocaust from its history, the German government has worked hard to ensure remembrance, penance, recompense and justice.
The United States, in contrast, has no official policy of atoning for slavery.
The German experience with reparations is, of course, not directly comparable to that of the United States.
Germany had to lose a devastating war before it compensated the Jewish people. And, as in the case of the Japanese American prisoners of war who received reparations, the Jewish victims of the Nazi regime and their descendants were relatively easy to identify.
The U.S. government paying reparations today for state terror that ended 150 years ago poses numerous practical challenges. They include identifying the rightful recipients and sourcing the money appropriately – whether state-based or federal.
But old injustices don’t simply disappear with time. Left unaddressed, they fuel the kind of division, shame and resentment that, as America knows well, can divide a nation.
CALIFORNIA ENACTS LAW PROTECTING THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF PEOPLE ENGAGING IN CONSENSUAL SEX WORK: “California has taken an important step in recognizing the dignity of people engaged in consensual sex work, who often face a disproportionate risk of being victims of violent crime,” said Sarah Warbelow (@SarahWarbelow), HRC Legal Director. “No person should be put at risk of abuse or fear violence simply for trying to survive. Importantly, this law will enhance public health and safety, especially for people of color, transgender people and those living at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities. We’re grateful to Sen. Scott Weiner for his leadership in pushing for this important legislation.” More from HRC.
HRC JOINED THE DNC AND ACTOR NYLE DIMARCO (@NyleDiMarco) FOR AN LGBTQ COMMUNITY BREAKFAST IN DETROIT: More from HRC.
Ahead of tonight’s #DemDebate, @HRC joined the @DNC for a community breakfast to discuss the issues facing the LGBTQ community, including fighting discrimination on the federal and state level, HIV prevention & violence against LGBTQ people & specifically transwomen of color. pic.twitter.com/LbCI0QrQz9
THANKFUL THURSDAY — HRC HOSTS PANEL DISCUSSION ON “MENTAL HEALTH IN LGBTQ COMMUNITIES OF COLOR” AS MINORITY MENTAL HEALTH MONTH COMES TO A CLOSE: Watch here.
DON LEMON’S INTEGRITY IS AN EXAMPLE TO EVERYONE: More from HRC.
Don Lemon has spent his career pursuing truth & reporting facts in the public interest.
He’s demonstrated remarkable courage on issues including race, sexual violence, & the experiences of LGBTQ people in our country & around the world. His integrity is an example to everyone.
Mario Lopez’s comments are dangerous to the safety and well-being of LGBTQ youth, especially trans children who deserve to be loved and accepted for who they are. t.co/iRBwyobelf
BRITISH PRIME MINISTER BORIS JOHNSON APPOINTS ANTI-TRANSGENDER JOURNALIST AS ADVISOR: More from PinkNews.
AMIDST ANTI-LGBTQ SENTIMENT IN POLAND, POLISH #JESTEMLGBT (#IAMLGBT) CAMPAIGN AIMED AT FIGHTING DISCRIMINATION TAKES OFF: More from Openly.
READING RAINBOW – Bookmark now to read on your lunch break!
Los Angeles Times reports on the evolution of LGBTQ acceptance in hip-hop; Attitude reports that two same-sex members of rock group Rammstein kissed onstage in Moscow; Daily Mail shares beautiful photos of a same-sexcouple’s traditional Hindu wedding.
