Appearing Friday on ABC's The View,
CNN anchor Don Lemon talked about how being African American affected
his coming out.
Lemon came out in Transparent,
his 2011 memoir, making him only the third openly gay news
personality at the time, the other two being Rachel Maddow and
Thomas Roberts. (CNN's Anderson Cooper didn't come out until the
following year.)
The 52-year-old
appeared on the show to discuss his response to Kevin Hart's Oscars
controversy.
Hart turned down an
opportunity to host this year's Oscars after he was criticized over
old homophobic tweets and jokes. He said that he would rather not
host the awards show than apologize because he's previously
apologized.
On his show, Lemon
questioned the sincerity of Hart's apology – which he made after he
turned down the hosting opportunity – and noted that the news
outlet could not find those previous apologies that Hart claims he's
made.
“For
many in the gay community, but especially in the black community, the
Twitter apologies or explanations on Ellen
have fallen flat,” Lemon
said. “To many they seem insincere and that he has somehow
turned himself into a victim, instead of acknowledging the real
victims of violent and sometimes deadly homophobia. Kevin, if
anything, this is the time to hear other people out. To understand
why they might have been offended. And I don't see any meaningful
outreach to the LGBT community.”
On Friday, Lemon
said that he spoke out because he wanted to represent his “group.”
“So,
I felt that I had to speak for my group, my people or nobody else was
going to speak for my people. And this wasn't an attack on Kevin
Hart. I'm not attacking Kevin Hart at all. But nobody's perfect and
I needed him and society to see sort of the error of our ways when it
comes to homophobia in our society,” Lemon
said.
When asked how
being black affected his own coming out, Lemon answered: “You're a
double minority. You feel that there's already one strike against
you. You're being discriminated against because of your color and
then you try to hold the other thing in because you don't want to be
discriminated against again. So, I think it took me longer to come
out publicly.”