Mario Lopez Is Drawing Backlash for His Comments About Transgender Children

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] We connected because I heard her story and when I heard that I was just completely inspired by it. My story with [UNKNOWN] is about bullying and I wanted to have her in the audience with me tonight because I feel like we've been some of the same things. And now we get to share this experience together I'm also really grateful that Debbie has spent her career advocating for people who need a voice, when they feel voiceless, and that she really understands that no matter what you look like, where you come from, how you worship, or who you love You should be welcomed and celebrated because of who you are, not despite it. [MUSIC] Some fans are saying that I've inspired them to either get over certain struggles in their lives that they've been through, whether it's bullying, a mental illness. And some people have actually said that I've saved their life, which is unfathomable and I can't comprehend it fully, but. It means the world to me. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]

UPDATE: In a statement to Variety, Mario Lopez addressed his comments about transgender children: "The comments I made were ignorant and insensitive, and I now have a deeper understanding of how hurtful they were. I have been and always will be an ardent supporter of the LGBTQ community, and I am going to use this opportunity to better educate myself. Moving forward I will be more informed and thoughtful.”

Mario Lopez is catching heat over some recent comments about raising transgender children.

During the interview, Owens raised the question of what she called the “weird trend” in Hollywood of celebrities who have made room for their children "picking their gender," pointing to Charlize Theron as an example.

"And this is strange to me, and they say, ‘Oh, I looked at my child and my child was swimming in a bathtub and looked up and said, "Mommy, I’m a boy," and that’s weird," Owens said. “I am trying to understand this new Hollywood mentality where they just think their children now have the mental authority.”

"I'm kind of blown away, too," Lopez replied. "Look, 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 this determination then, OK, then you're going to a boy or a girl, whatever the case may be ... It's sort of alarming and my gosh, I just think about the repercussions later on."

He then conflated gender identity with sexual identity, telling Owens, “When you’re a kid ... you don’t know anything about sexuality yet. You’re just a kid.”

Lopez, who welcomed his third child with wife Courtney Mazza earlier this month, also told Owens that his children don't associate with children who are trans or gender nonbinary.

"They don't kick it with those kids," he said.

The comments drew outcry from people who say Lopez's comments are misinformed.

Elsewhere in the interview, Lopez called out the #MeToo and #BelieveWomen hashtags as "dangerous," because "people lie and sometimes those people are women," and said it was "incredibly dangerous" to take women at their word.

“God forbid you have a son out there and a girl may have felt a certain way about a situation — dismissed, hurt, whatever, and is feeling vengeful and just decides to tell a certain story that’s not even exactly true, come back and hurt that individual," he said.

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In 1993, Lopez was accused of date rape by an 18-year-old woman, but was not arrested, and denied the charges.