How many in the music business? Hard to say as many of them still don’t want to come out, and I would say it all depends on the type of music you are playing. When I was young, no singer, no musician was gay! I mean no one had publicly come out. Still now, it is hard, look how long it took for Ricky Martin or Clay Aiken to admit they were gays whereas it was soooooo obvious.
How many gay country music artists do you know? Recently there was singer Chely Wright who confessed she was gay, but that was a first in this country world! I did not know her but I saw her on TV saying she had greatly suffered, contemplating suicide at one point. She also admitted she may lose her career in country music and this says a lot about how gays are accepted in this genre. Paradoxically the western outfits attract the gay audience, and the likes of Dolly Parton have understood this a long time ago, but they are the exceptions.
How many gay rappers do you know? Another world not very gay friendly to say the least, as a lot of rap is about masculinity, macho attitude and homophobic lyrics. Famous artists like Eminem, DMX and Ice Cube, have been targeted by gay activists for using homophobic lyrics. Didn’t Eminem say he hated ‘fags’ in a song? This does not mean that many rappers are not living a secret homosexual life, 10% is 10% everywhere.
But why so much hate for gays? I have always thought about that. This hate lies only on one preconceived notion of sexuality, the one that has been imposed by a conservative religious society. That is the only explanation. People hate gays because the bible says so. Thus when Iman says he does not want to hate people because of their religion, if this religion tells them to hate gays, I guess I have to hate them because of their religion.
Country music’s audience is mostly made of conservative Christians, and this explains my point. For rap, it is less clear, although the black community has always been religious, and black rappers are probably not an exception. But for many it is probably more a question related to the fact they are afraid to lose their strong macho image if they admit they are gay, or are around gays. They may also be uncomfortable with their own sexuality!
You are gonna say religion is not the only thing that has preached hatred against gays. Sure, Nazis were no gay rights fans, but this is the same idea, the idea to adopt an ideology, to belong to a group with strong convictions, and Nazism was religion-like.
Conservative religious people refuse the facts, they refuse science and they still live in the Middle Ages where the bible has more value than anything. They still proclaim that homosexuality is a choice whereas science says it has strong biological basis, very probably genetic, and, for them, if homosexuality is a ‘disease’, it is one that doesn’t kill, but it is their hatred that is the disease of our society.
If artists, musicians were really the lights of our society, they should be the first ones to get rid of this disease.