Michelle Shocked Draws Fire for Anti-Gay Remarks

Andy Manis/Associated Press Michelle Shocked performing in Madison, Wisc., in 2011.

Michelle Shocked, the punk folk-singer, liberal activist and born-again Christian, has drawn fire for an anti-gay tirade in San Francisco over the weekend, during which she said God hates homosexuals.

One nightclub in Evanston, Ill., on Monday canceled a scheduled appearance in May after her remarks at Yoshi’s jazz club in San Francisco on Sunday night. The Evanston club, Space, said on its Facebook page that “it’s clear that this is no longer a show we’re willing to put our name on.” At least four other shows have also been cancelled, including a March 29 show at the Hopmonk Tavern in Novato, Calif., The Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

Michelle Shocked cited Old Testament verses condemning homosexuality and told the audience she hoped the courts would uphold Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage, according to an Yahoo Music. “I live in fear that the world will be destroyed if gays are allowed to marry,” she said. Then she also told the audience to go on Twitter and report that she had said God hates homosexuals, though it is unclear whether that remark was sardonic.

Much of the audience walked out after her remarks. The club’s manager tried to end the show, but she continued playing until the staff pulled the plug and turned off the stage lights.

Gay rights has been a touchy subject for Michelle Shocked over the years. In 1990, she told an interviewer at the Dallas Voice that she had once had a relationship with a woman but did not want to be defined as a lesbian.

In recent years, she underwent a religious conversion and started attending a Pentecostal church, and her statements about homosexuality became more tortured. She told the Dallas Voice in 2008 that she resented attempts by journalists to pin down her sexual orientation.

“There are some inconvenient truths that I’m now a born-again, sanctified, saved-in-the-blood Christian. So much of what’s said and done in the name of that Christianity is appalling,” the singer told the weekly paper. “According to my Bible, which I didn’t write, homosexuality is immoral. But homosexuality is no more less a sin than fornication. And I’m a fornicator with a capital F.”

Then in 2011, she became incensed when a member of the audience asked her position on gay rights at the Christian-oriented Wild Goose Festival in North Carolina, Religion Dispatches magazine reported.

“Who drafted me as a gay icon” she said. “You are looking at the world’s greatest homophobe. Ask God what he thinks.”