Mario Lopez Had To Be Pressured By His Team Into Apologizing For Transgender Comments, Report Claims
Mario Lopez issued an apology after critical comments about celebrities with young transgender children, but it apparently did not come easy for the actor and television host.
A new report from Radar Online claims that Mario’s team had to pressure the Extra host into issuing an apology for the comments, saying they would not be able to help defend him against the criticism he was receiving.
As the report noted, Mario Lopez was aware of how bad the comments could be for him, but it still took some convincing from his camp in order to issue the apology.
“No one in his camp knew how they would be able to spin this and justify his remarks,” a source told Radar Online. “They told him to make a public apology, stat!”
Lopez had stirred the controversy for comments he made on The Candace Owens Show about young children who identify as transgender, saying he believes it is “dangerous” for a parent to make a determination for a 3-year-old that they are going to identify as another gender. Lopez said he thought that trend was alarming and could lead to repercussions later on.
The remarks sparked a widespread backlash against Lopez, including the LGBT advocacy organization GLAAD that noted on Twitter that medical and psychological experts have discredited the ideas that Lopez posited on the show. Lopez didn’t work on Extra the night after the controversy broke out, and instead the program brought in GLAAD director Anthony Ramos and Adolescent Medicine physician Dr. Johanna Olson Kennedy to address his remarks.
“I think the question about when do you know your gender, what age are you when you know your gender, is a very important one because we understand that people know their gender at the age of three or four years old,” Olsen-Kennedy said, via Cosmopolitan. “This is a big body of research that was undertaken in the 1970s.”
Medical and psychological experts, and parents of children who are transgender, have long discredited the ideas that @MarioLopezExtra shared. The real dangerous action is when someone with a public platform uses bad science to speak against a vulnerable group of children. https://t.co/kz2pEMWTBm
— GLAAD (@glaad) July 31, 2019
While it may have taken some cajoling, Lopez ended up issuing a full apology and saying his comments were “ignorant and insensitive” and that he now has a deeper understanding of how they were hurtful.
“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,” he said.
The full-throated apology from Mario Lopez could have been motivated in part by a desire to protect his career, Radar Online hinted. The actor and television host is set to take over for Natalie Morales as host of Access Hollywood next month.
