Mario Lopez says it's 'dangerous' for parents to support transgender kids

Actor and television personality Mario Lopez is facing backlash for saying it’s “dangerous” for parents to support children who identify as transgender.

The father of three and co-host of the entertainment news program "Extra" made the comments during a June appearance on “The Candace Owens Show,” a PragerU YouTube series, but his comments only recently attracted attention on social media.

During the 40-minute interview, Owens, a conservative commentator, noted that Lopez’s son has “boyish” interests, and that it struck her as “a weird trend” that some celebrities, like Charlize Theron, are allowing their children to choose their gender identity.

Owens said that as a former nanny, she believes children do not possess the “mental authority” to express a gender identity different than the one they were assigned at birth and compared children claiming transgender identity to them pretending to be a superhero or a mermaid, a childhood act of make-believe.

“I’m kind of blown away, too,” Lopez responded. “I’m never one to tell anyone how to parent their kids, obviously, and I think if you come from a place of love, you really can’t go wrong, but at the same time, my God, if you're 3 years old and you’re saying you’re feeling a certain way or you think you’re a boy or a girl or whatever the case may be, I just think it's dangerous as a parent to make that determination."

“It's sort of alarming, and my gosh, I just think about the repercussions later on,” he continued.

Lopez and Owens then conflated gender identity and sexual orientation, with Lopez saying, “When you’re a kid ... you don’t know anything about sexuality yet. You’re just a kid."

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