In a surprise reversal, the R&B artist Ne-Yo has retracted his earlier apology over his comments about transgender children, saying he stands by his original comments condemning parents who allow their children to undergo irreversible sex-change procedures.
Ne-Yo put out a video Monday afternoon in which he implied that his earlier apology was written by a publicist. He also said he doesn’t fear being cancelled over his opinions,
“I normally don’t give too much of a damn about what y’all think about what I do, what you all have to say about what I say, whatever … however this is something I feel very strongly on and I need y’all to hear it from the horse’s mouth and not the publicist’s computer,” he said.
BREAKING: @NeYoCompound defends his statements on transitioning children. “I will never be okay with allowing a child to make a decision that detrimental to their life.” pic.twitter.com/1VW2vMgEcE
— Amala Ekpunobi (@amalaekpunobi) August 7, 2023
“First and foremost, I do not apologize for having an opinion on this matter. I am a 43- year-old heterosexual man raising five boys and two girls — that’s my reality,” he continued.
“Now, if my opinion offended somebody, yeah sure, I apologize for you being offended because that wasn’t my intention. My intention is never to offend anybody. However, I am entitled to feel how I feel — I am absolutely entitled to feel how I feel, the same way you’re entitled to feel how you feel.”
Ne-Yo said he has no beef with the LGBTQIA+ community. However, “I will never be OK with allowing a child to make a decision that detrimental to their life. I will never be OK with that,” he said.
“If I get cancelled for this, then you know what, maybe this is world where they don’t need a Ne-Yo no more,” he added. “And I got no problem with that. I’m a hustler, I’ll figure it out.”
Ne-Yo made his original comments during a recent interview with Gloria Velez on VladTV.
“I feel like the parents have almost forgotten what the role of a parent is,” he said. “If your little boy comes up to you and says, ‘Daddy I wanna be a girl,’ you just let him rock with that?”
He continued: “Where did he get that? If you let this 5-year-old little boy eat candy all day, he’s gonna do that. Like, when did it become a good idea to let a 5-year-old, a 6-year-old, a 12-year-old make a life-changing decision?”
Ne-Yo later published an apology on Sunday to his social media accounts, expressing his “deepest apologies to anyone that I may have burt with my comments on parenting and gender ideology.”
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