Lance Bass On 'Larry King': I Used To Bully Gay Kids (VIDEO)

Lance Bass used to bully gay kids as a closeted teen growing up Southern Baptist in the Bible Belt, he admitted to Larry King Monday night.

"You made fun of gay kids in high school to hide your own secret?" Larry asked. "Did you think you were harming your own kind?"

"That's right," Lance replied. "When you're 13, 14, you just go along with what the other people are doing. You just want to fit in. You want to make sure that your friends like you. So yeah, you're going to crack jokes, you're going to laugh along with it. And when you're a teenager, you're not really thinking, 'Oh, I'm being a bully by laughing along with it.'"

Tim Gunn, Wanda Sykes and Kathy Griffin also appeared on the segment to discuss gay bullying, which has recently led to several gay teen suicides.

WATCH:

Comments

[hot Dog tree]

01:33 PM on 10/06/2010

Larry asked. "Did you think you were harming your own kind?"

Larry speaks his mind. He doesn't mince words

[GayIthacan]

07:41 AM on 10/06/2010

Wouldn't being bullied by Lance Bass equate to being lectured on ones lack of intelligence by Sarah Palin?

[Samantha Monteleone]

12:58 AM on 10/06/2010

Boys who bully homosexual boys are either insecure because they have something similar to hide or because they are ridiculously homophobic. I say, if it isn't personally bothering you, then leave it alone and mind your own business.

I've seen cases where gay men hit on straight men numerous times, even knowing that these guys are straight and that they are uncomfortable with this, which is completely disrespectful. The bullying does actually happen the other way around.

With that said, I don't condone violence, nor do I condone bullying from either party. So like I said before, if it's not affecting you personally, leave it alone because you are in no place to mess with someone else just because they have a different sexual orientation. That is just childish.

[AnitaMan]

01:47 AM on 10/06/2010

"you've seen cases"

I'm sure that poor straight guys wanted to kill themselves after such horrific case of bullying....grow up.

[Samantha Monteleone]

01:52 AM on 10/06/2010

Oh, hush.

[Hazlvixen]

09:11 PM on 10/09/2010

Then I get bullied every time I go to a night club. " Can I buy you a drink pretty lady".." No and stop bullying me dammit" (the wedding ring does nothing to deter..)

Most of the men my gay bf has sex with are straight (just an FYI)

Remember that incident where the 6 gay guys surrounded straightie and bullied, tormented and sodomized him? Me either

[Samantha Monteleone]

06:43 AM on 10/10/2010

Really? I think you're full of it, actually.

[goodnewsgophers]

10:58 PM on 10/05/2010

Even the slightest ways we communicate convey ignorance. It's so unfortunately commonplace to hear "that's so gay" about things that clearly are not gay.

I'd love to hear the opinion of anyone who's read Malcolm Gladwell on gay teen suicide as a social epidemic. In that case, the best & worst way to beat this epidemic is to publicize it...

[Samantha Monteleone]

12:48 AM on 10/06/2010

I feel like it is more of an adolescent thing. I haven't said or heard "that's gay" since high school, but perhaps it has something to do with the crowd I hang around nowdays.

[theseusofaustralia]

04:36 AM on 10/06/2010

The teabagger crowd? (i'm sorry i just wanted to do one teabagger joke)

[Violinhunter]

10:52 PM on 10/05/2010

This is off topic but - I had no idea King was still alive!!! I'm so happy for him.

[Winthorpe]

10:39 PM on 10/05/2010

Anderson Cooper and Ellen are talking about bullying on CNN, and he mentioned the offensiveness of the term "that's so gay," which is on a movie preview. It's tough for me to consider it offensive when a gay colleague looked at my lunch -- just a salad -- and said, "that's so gay."

[Bob Kellerman]

04:28 AM on 10/06/2010

OK, a Black friend liked your shoes and said you must be a Nxxxxx at heart
Then a strange Black person walked by and you told him he had on Nxxxxx shoes.

A Jewish person told you that you were so funny you must be Jewish
A strange Jew walked by and you said to him "Hi, Jew!"

You told a Martian a bunch of Venusian jokes, and he said "Stop, you're killing me"
Then a Venusian walked by and you said "I'll kill you"

My examples are imperfect, but am I getting through at all?

[Jdaddy1951]

03:40 PM on 10/06/2010

Make it simple for him: A gay person can say, "That's so gay," with irony. If he is not gay, he probably shouldn't say it, except possibly around his gay friend. And only if that gay friend has indicated he's cool with it.

[Winthorpe]

08:25 PM on 10/06/2010

No.

[theseusofaustralia]

04:38 AM on 10/06/2010

replace the gay with (hebrew, ni**er, C**nk,sp**k) and see how stupid that sentence is and also how bigoted.

[Winthorpe]

08:26 PM on 10/06/2010

That doesn't work. How about using an intellectual argument?

Think of it this way: how are people supposed to know which phrases that a group uses are acceptable for others to use and which are not?

[Jdaddy1951]

09:27 PM on 10/05/2010

All of these celebrities provided insightful comments, but Kathy Griffin's anger and outrage came across and match the tone that's needed to respond to this. Bullying is unacceptable and un-American! Those who practice it need to be stopped in their tracks!

[theseusofaustralia]

04:39 AM on 10/06/2010

Kathy put it out there, she's not shy to be on larry king live.

[tippisheadrun]

05:57 PM on 10/05/2010

I watched this program and Lance Bass and Tim Gunn were insighful and thought provoking in their comments, particularily Bass. What surprised me the most was Larry King, who seemed more engaged in this topic than anything he`s done in years. King has seemed to be on auto pilot for eons but his interest and compassion were on display last night and he seemed a bit like the old Larry of 20 years ago.

[theseusofaustralia]

04:40 AM on 10/06/2010

Well he usually is talking about paris hilton , lindsay lohan etc with other celebrities.

[KJLSanDiego]

05:36 PM on 10/05/2010

I guess it's true what they say: we fight against others that which we do not want in ourselves.
I am an educated progressive, but I come from a low income and education area. Not to mention a really conservative, mostly Mormon family.
Maybe that's why I make such fun of baggers, because I so easily could have ended up like that based on where I come from.
I hope gay kids can grow up to see that they are great and fine, just as I grew up to know that school is great and fine.

[zest]

05:16 PM on 10/05/2010

Wow, that's powerful and that's good TV.

[FantasticFourFan]

04:44 PM on 10/05/2010

This proves that everyone who bullies gays is a closet case.

[TurtlesAllTheWay]

05:54 PM on 10/05/2010

Not necessarily true. Many of them might be, some of them are just bigots.

It's wrong in any case, no matter the motive.

[theseusofaustralia]

04:42 AM on 10/06/2010

I never understood why people cared what adults used their genitals for as long as its between consenting adults who cares.

[AnitaMan]

01:50 AM on 10/06/2010

boy you sure missed the point....

it's so ingrained and accepted to put gay people down that even closeted gays do it.

[Balzac]

02:42 PM on 10/05/2010

Probably, a majority of teenagers did what Lance Bass did at one time. Also there is the a compelling impulse to follow along with others, sharing a laugh whether or not you get the joke, or whether you actually find no humor in the punch-line. Many jokes are tragically funny, or somehow irreverent, but sometimes they're just not funny.

Many people laugh first, then if it's outside their range of poignant humor, they think "hey, wait a second..." I've become so accustomed to laughing first, I can easily find myself out of position for one laugh, but there won't likely be a second chuckle on the same topic, because the second laugh is really the one which counts.

[invirginia]

02:23 PM on 10/05/2010

Guess they didn't teach him to respect others in Baptist Sunday School. That's surprising.

[Tails]

03:43 PM on 10/05/2010

He grew up in Mississippi. It was projection, plain and simple.

My mom is a psychiatrist, she had a client who would reassert his "straightness" every session. He eventually got busted with a male prostitute. Pro-jec-tion.

[KJLSanDiego]

05:38 PM on 10/05/2010

I'd love to hear her stories (not that she would share confidential information, but I bet she has some juicy tales of, shall we say, interesting people)!

[Niasia]

02:09 PM on 10/05/2010

I am happy to admit that I really can't remember gay taunts in my school time. I don't think we really had an issue with it. I do hope we can move pass this as a nation.

[invirginia]

02:21 PM on 10/05/2010

You may not have been aware, but many bullies target gay students under the radar. And the bullied student often suffers in silence.

[Tails]

04:26 PM on 10/05/2010

I can testify to that.

[zest]

05:17 PM on 10/05/2010

It's more like we have to move through it.

[Tails]

06:02 PM on 10/05/2010

And not think about it while not trying to think about suicide.

[arabesque52]

02:01 PM on 10/05/2010

Kathy Griffin is speaking out too? Isn't a big part of her schtick "outing" people? She's part of the problem, not a solution.

[harriettubman]

02:02 PM on 10/05/2010

Does she do that? That's violating someone's privacy to me.

[PresidentRobertBooth]

03:49 PM on 10/05/2010

Outing is fine is the person being outed has actively campaigned to deny gay people their rights despite being gay themselves.