When Did Michelle Shocked Become A Christian Bigot?
I am in total shock, no pun intended, as I thought she was totally cool! But no, Michelle Shocked isn’t cool anymore!
On Sunday, at Yoshi’s San Francisco, she launched into an anti-gay rant, declaring ‘I live in fear, that the world will be destroyed if gays are allowed to marry’, even adding ‘You can go on Twitter and say ‘Michelle Shocked says God hates fags.'
What? Was she kidding? Is this the same folk musician I saw during an Earth day celebration, the same dynamic woman who used to fight for progressive causes? She even got arrested during an Occupy LA event!!
Alas, it doesn’t seem to be a joke, she recently became a born-again Christian, a total fundamentalist one as a member of the Pentacostal West Angeles Church of God in Christ, and that explains a lot, or not… how a girl whose second album ‘Short Sharp Shocked’ with a cover art was featured a cop putting a choke-hold around her neck, how a girl who used to have a big gay/lesbian following can reach this point? And in San Francisco at the top of it!
According to people who were at the show, she performed her first set without saying anything, but definitively had an agenda during her second set: She wanted to clearly deliver her message… and there is no way she will get another gig in San Francisco any time soon, because, try to separate the art of the artist on this one!
And for people who think she had a day off her meds, this is not the case, as this is what she said in 2011 according to a religious website:
‘Who drafted me as a gay icon? You are looking at the world’s greatest homophobe. Ask God what He thinks’
It is so strange for a woman who supposedly did her come out in a 1990 issue of OutLines:
‘I was with my first woman lover about a year and a half ago. To be honest, the real fear of coming out of the closet, not fear, but the real pressures of coming out of the closet had been if you had certain problems identifying yourself one way or the other.’
The San Francisco Weekly is even reporting that a petition is now circulating urging the venues hosting her tour to cancel the dates, and nine of them (in Santa Cruz, Seattle, Portland, Boulder and Novato) have already canceled! This is an excerpt of the Change.org document currently circulating:
'Freedom of speech and artistic expression are critically important, but this isn't free speech. This is hate speech. And in a world where LGBT people are bullied from the pulpit, on the playground, and at the polls, anti-gay hate speech can have serious consequences including legitimizing bullying and hate crimes, and increasing victims' risk of anxiety, depression, and suicide.'
I don’t want to paraphrase the late great Christopher Hitchens, but she is a good example of how religion poisons everything! What a mess she has become!
