Ellen to straight people: ‘We need your help now.”

Ellen DeGeneres may be one of the funniest people on television, but she knows when to get serious.

Ellen has been a very vocal proponent of same-sex marriage and more recently, she has spoken up about a series of bullied gay teens who committed suicide.  The recent hateful, anti-gay remarks filled with slurs posted on Facebook by an Arkansas school board member named Clint McCance has Ellen calling out for everyone – straight and gay – to stand up against this kind of hate.

“It would not be acceptable if someone used the n-word,” DeGeneres said in an interview that aired Thursday on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360°. “When the civil rights movement happened, it took not just the community of blacks to make a change, but white people needed to step in and say this is unacceptable. We cannot tolerate this and treat any citizen with lesser value. And, I think, as a gay person, I would like to personally ask every heterosexual person out there who is appalled by this to – we need your help now. This is absurd and he should resign.”

McCance told Anderson Cooper in an interview on the same program that he did plan to resign.

In the interview, DeGeneres also tells Cooper she does not think McCance’s views are justified by his Christian faith, which he referenced in his controversial Facebook postings.

“It gives religion a bad name,” says DeGeneres. “And I think Jesus is – Jesus is the one who taught not to judge and to love everyone. So I don’t know what kind of religion he follows, but that is not [being] a good Christian.”