Mario Lopez Calls Supporting Trans Kids 'Dangerous'

UPDATE: The Access Hollywood host has apologized for his remarks in a statement to The Advocate.

"The comments I made were ignorant and insensitive, and I now have a deeper understanding of how hurtful they were,” Lopez said via a statement from his rep. "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."

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A Mario Lopez interview from earlier this summer has finally started gaining attention, and it’s not pretty.

The TV host appeared on The Candace Owens Show in June, where Owens, a conservative and Trump supporter, made a comment about a “weird trend” in Hollywood where celebrities say that they’ve let their children pick their own genders.

Owens goes on to suggest it’s similar to children saying that they’re mermaids, or that they could fly, because children “say whatever in the moment.”

Lopez agreed, saying he’s “kinda blown away,” and pleads with Owens not to lump him in with the celebrities following this “trend.”

“I always say 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 girl, whatever the case may be, I just think it’s dangerous as a parent to make that determination then, ‘Okay, well then you’re gonna be a boy or girl,’ whatever the case may be. And it’s sort of alarming, and my gosh, I just think about the repercussions later on.”

It’s a predictably warped version of what’s actually happening, which is that some parents in the world, some of whom are celebrities and most of whom are not, are allowing children who say they are a different gender than they were assigned at birth to present themselves and identify as that gender.

And as everyone who pays any attention whatsoever knows, these feelings are generally explored and ultimately either validated or not by child psychologists, and no sort of hormone therapy or surgical proceedings happen until many years later, if they do.

Both Owens and Lopez went on to claim that three-year-olds don’t know anything about sexuality, horribly conflating the concept of gender identity with sexual expression, and failing to acknowledge that three-year-olds who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth actually do generally have a concept of gender by that age.

While a lot of these comments are pure ignorance from both Lopez and Owens, Lopez eventually utterly doubled down and added that his kids “don’t kick it with those kids,” referring to any kids whose parents would let them “pick their gender.”

Yikes.

If you want to see how gross the conversation was for yourself, you can watch the full interview below. The discussion in question begins at around the 11:00 mark. And remember, kids: don't read the comments.