Kathy Griffin, Lance Bass, Wanda Sykes,
Tim Gunn, Chely Wright and Nate Berkus were among the celebrities
talking about gay bullying on CNN's Larry
King Live.
The show, which aired on Monday, comes
after a rash of gay teens were bullied to death.
“Look, let's cut the crap,” Griffin
told Larry King. “I think that the way we had trickle-down
economics in the 80s, this is trickle-down homophobia. And I really
want people to connect the dots, and that's why I believe there's a
connection between Prop 8, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and now this string
of teen suicides.”
“It's almost sanctioned to bully gay
people and treat them as second class citizens,” the 49-year-old
star of Bravo's My Live of the D List added. “I think a lot
of the so-called religious leaders play into it, and the politicians
certainly aren't doing enough. There are a lot of right-wing
conservative people that absolutely sanction this behavior.” (The
video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)
Former 'NSYNCer Lance Bass, who is gay,
talked about bullying kids in his youth.
“When you're a teenager you're not
really thinking, 'Oh, I'm being a bully by laughing along with it.' …
But you're also a bully by condoning the behavior and making the
jokes along with them.”
Nate Berkus, host of the syndicated
talk show The Nate Berkus Show, advocated for parents
to intervene on behalf of children who are being bullied.
“Everyone knows who the bullies are,
Larry,” Berkus, who is openly gay, said. “Walk into a
third-grade class and it takes you 2 minutes to identify who is
bullying who.”
“You be that hero,” the 39-year-old
host added. “We have to intervene.”