On 'Anderson Cooper,' Ellen DeGeneres Says She's Been Bullied

 
PUBLISHED: OCTOBER 08, 2010

Chat show host Ellen DeGeneres says she's been bullied her entire life

 for being gay.

The openly lesbian entertainer who married her girlfriend, Australian 

actress Portia Lee James DeGeneres, in 2008, appeared Wednesday on 

CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 to discuss the recent string of gay teens who committed suicide after being bullied.

“When these things happen, it feels like a direct assault on me, because

 I am that person that they are bullying,” DeGeneres told Anderson Cooper.

 “I am that person that – that feels like committing suicide. They're talking

 about me. I'm gay, and I have been ostracized my whole life and in society. 

And I'm sent that message on a daily basis by the media, and – and it

 hurts.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)

The fifty-two-year-old host of the popular daytime talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show came out gay in 1997 on the cover of Time. She married her girlfriend in 2008 after a four-year romance.

“I want to say to those kids out there: I have been through it,” she added.

 “I came out. I am successful. I am happy. I am in love, and there is hope.”

BY ON TOP MAGAZINE STAFF