CNN anchor Don Lemon, who became the
third openly gay high-profile news personality behind MSNBC's Rachel
Maddow and Thomas Roberts last week, says he once tried to pray away
the gay.
Lemon told The New York Times
that he's gay, ahead of the release of his upcoming 264-page memoir
titled Transparent, in which he talks about his experience.
The book is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com.
In
an interview with HLN's Dr. Drew Pinsky, Lemon, 45, talked about
the cultural bias associated with being gay in the African-American
community.
In the Black community “people
believe that you can pray the gay away. That it is a choice.”
“I remember saying my prayers. As
someone who went to a Catholic school, who grew up Baptist, who
studied with a Jehovah’s witness partner – Bible partner – I
knew enough about the Bible as a kid, and about scriptures and about
doctrine and all that. So I would say my prayers and then silently I
would pray that I would change and not have crushes on boys. I
didn't know what it was because I was a kid, so I didn't sexualize
it, but you know that you're different. But you don't know what it
is when you hear people around you saying, 'you're going to go to
hell and that's bad.' I tried to pray. Up until I was an adult.”
Earlier, Lemon
told media website Gawker.com that he's in a 4-year relationship
but added that “this is about me at the moment.”