A viral video taken by a gay couple in Nashville celebrating their prom has become a national story with Kathy Griffin calling out a CEO for his homophobia.
As reported in Newsweek magazine, this past weekend Sam Johnson, the CEO of a Tennessee online medical company VisuWell, began harassing two high-schoolers at a local Nashville hotel because one of them was wearing a dress. Tennessee is one of several Republican controlled states that has recently passed anti-LGBTQ legislation including barring transgender female athletes from competing on gender-affirming teams.
In the video recorded by one of the high-schoolers on Tik-Tok, high school senior Dalton Stevens is heard telling Johnson: “I chose what I wanna wear so you can f*** off,” after which Johnson responds: “Is that right?” Stevens then walks away from Johnson, who subsequently follows, stands near the high schooler and says: “You look like an idiot.” The distressed teenager shouts “F*** off” at Johnson and “Get the f*** away from me.”
Johnson then appears to try smacking the phone of Stevens’ boyfriend Jacob Geittmann. In a pair of TikTok videos giving his side of the story, Geittman said Johnson swung at his phone and missed, instead hitting Stevens on the back.
The video ends with off-camera voices of appears to be adults pleading with a smiling Johnson to stop, with one telling him: “It’s just prom. It’s kids, it’s a bunch of kids. Come on, dude.”
If this is Sam Johnson in Nashville, Tennessee, the CEO of @VisuWell, healthcare-tech-growth strategist, married to Jill Johnson where they may reside in Franklin, Tennessee, it seems like he’s dying to be online famous. 🤷♀️🏳️🌈🤷♀️ https://t.co/GPYOYBQywv
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) April 26, 2021
When the teens’ video went viral gay ally Kathy Griffin took to Twitter to publicly shame Johnson and call him out on his homophobia, and the rest of the Twitterverse followed suit. With an outpouring of support for the gay couple, pressure was building for TruWell to take action against their CEO and yesterday it is reported that the board of directors has terminated Johnson due to his actions.
🚨UPDATE: Homphobe who harassed Franklin High LGBT kids at prom Terminated 👇🏽
@VisuWell thank you for doing the right thing. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. 🏳️🌈 https://t.co/y7MyTOrBjC
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) April 26, 2021
Score one for the good guys!
Source: Newsweek, Twitter
Fun fact: There are only 2 genders. 🥰
Maybe we should be injecting boys like Dalton with testosterone instead of estrogen.
He would probably have a happier life.
Ohmg! Your arrogance is astounding, you seriously think you have the right to choose how one should live their life!
He does look like an idiot and this CEO has every right to voice his opinion, whether anyone agrees with him or not. The statement from the company is pure idiocy: We have zero tolerance for intolerance – i.e. you set the bar for intolerance.
He does look like an idiot and this CEO has every right to voice his opinion, whether anyone agrees with him or not. The statement from the company is pure idiocy: We have zero tolerance for intolerance – i.e. you set the bar for intolerance.
So you think it’s okay for a grown adult to randomly verbally abuse complete strangers, teenagers? You think this makes you a man?
I guess that he has a “right” to voice his opinion, but the guy he attacked was doing absolutely nothing to him … he was just being himself.
Personally, I’m not into guys in dresses, but I’m not going to the prom with him … and if I don’t like what I see, I can look away. I don’t think I gave any right to attack him verbally or otherwise.
The guy is a bully and hopefully his business suffers (though I suspect it’ll find as many supporters as it does boycotters – the USA being one über-divided nation).
My phone bring as crappy as it is, I didn’t see the part about him being terminated. Good for the company.
As physics tells us, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. His action, deservedly IMHO, caused his downfall, plain and simple.
Haha!!!
Yes Mr. Johnson deserved to be fired. Racism, bigotry and homophobia are not acceptable and he got what he deserved. Let’s keep this information relevant so this jerk isn’t able to find a job. I don’t even think McDonald’s would hire this vile POS.
No. No one deserves to lose their job for having the sort of opinion that you find abhorrent nor for making comments based on that opinion. Johnson obviously holds ridiculous opinions about gay people and about the freedom to dress in anyway that one wants to. It may be that he feels threatened by people exercising freedoms that he doesn’t understand. However, destroying his ability to earn money would destroy his family and lose his skills that his company uses and obviously values. What is needed is for him to be ridiculed in public for his stupid opinions and also we gay people and our allies should attempt to educate him also — and maybe help him to overcome his feelings of being threatened. There are too many like him and they need help not vitriolic destruction of them and their innocent families, which would merely make us as horrible as they are.
He was fired because he was harassing a teenage boy. Voicing an “opinion” is not the whole story. You can clearly see him walking after them and even trying to swat the phone from the boyfriend’s hand. He earned his termination richly.
People need to learn that there is a price to pay for shows of cruelty and intolerance, not to mention worse. However, you are right in saying that we shouldn’t stoop down to their level and become like them. He paid a price and he may yet live through additional fallout of his vile behavior, and that is enough.
Even so. Destroying someone’s life for actions that are petty and stupid, and probably done in the heat of the moment, strikes me as exactly the sort of revenge that most sensible people view with distaste. The mark of civilisation and civilised people is not “an eye for an eye” but justice tempered with mercy and understanding all underpinned by attempts to make the offender a better person. Your way of “killing” a man — cancelling a man — is foul and leaves bitter taste in mouth. It’s bad enough living in a world with people like Johnson without having to exist alongside people, like you, who play God and wreak terrible vengeance, vengeance devoid of compassion or understanding or mercy not just for the Johnsons of this world but for their families and all who know them, on anyone you, and your kind alone, decide cannot be redeemed or aren’t worthy of redemption. His nastiness does not, and cannot, justify yours.