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Watch: CNN's Don Lemon Calls Out Homophobic Coverage of Virginia Shooter

Watch: CNN's Don Lemon Calls Out Homophobic Coverage of Virginia Shooter

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Photo via WikiCommons/Neon Tommy

A correpondent called news that the shooter owned gay porn sites "just another disturbing twist."

CNN's coverage of Virginia shooter Vester Flanagan, a former employee of the news station WDBJ-TV who shot and killed reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, has been widely critcized for the undue focus given to the fact that Flanagan was gay. As part of the ongoing investigation into the attack, CNN correspondant Drew Griffin said that reports that Flanagan owned a number of gay porn websites was "just another disturbing twist." When Wolf Blitzer asked gay CNN correspondant Don Lemon to weigh in, Lemon, while in no ways defending Flanagan's actions, quickly shut down the dangerous link between violence, instability, and homosexuality that his network has been, knowingly or not, perpetuating:

"Well, I think the gay porn site is something--to me, I don't really see the releveance of it."

"I don't want to gay-shame him. There's nothing wrong with being gay."

Lemon then went on to say that the fact that Flanagan went on to own other websites is nothing strange, noting that Dan Abrams, formerly of ABC, went on to found another site. When Blitzer offered the clarification that Abrams didn't launch a gay porn site, Lemon fired back:

"There's no difference though. They're both legal. If Dan Abrams or anyone else wanted to start a gay porn site, as long as they're abiding by the law, there's aboslutely nothing wrong with it. You may look down on it and judge it, but there's nothing illegal about it. I don't see why it's relevent in this particular case."

Blitzer responded that Lemon's was a "fair enough point."

Watch the segment below:

[H/T Raw Story]

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