Brian Austin Green has admitted that he didn’t always have an easy time raising his 21-year-old “out and gay and proud” son Kassius.
Speaking on the Frosted Tips with Lance Bass podcast, Green admitted that raising a gay son was a “fascinating” experience and “it has been a challenge.”
“I think a lot of people are afraid of the unknown,” he added, “whereas I’m not. To me, it’s intriguing. And I want to learn about it.
Green said that he would have difficult conversations with Kassius where he “really wanted to understand the things that seemed so different… at first,” but soon realized that raising an LGBTQ+ child “isn’t different at all” from raising a straight one.
“It’s just your choice of partner. It doesn’t affect me at all,” he said. “That’s the thing I’m always trying to beat into people now — it does not affect you. Why do you care so much? And why are you trying to somehow bully your feelings and your opinion into something that literally does not affect you at all?”
Bass said that Kassius was lucky to have an open-minded parent like Green. “So many kids out there don’t get that,” he said. “And even if their parents accept them, there are a lot of times when the kid still knows that they still disagree with it.”
The former Beverly HIlls, 90210 star dated his castmate Vanessa Marcil from 1999-2003, with their son Kassius being born in 2002. After they broke up, he dated and eventually married Megan Fox, before separating from her after nearly 10 years of marriage. He is now engaged to Australian professional dancer Sharna Burgess. He has four other children.
While Green said he has struggled to support his gay son, Kassius' mother, Marcil has been a major supporter of him and of the LGBTQ+ community for years.
“My real job on this earth is to protect my son above all else. I will do that until my last breath and beyond that. How I must do that is not for you to understand. Just know that it’s been the pleasure of my life,” she wrote in a post celebrating Kassius back in 2021.
