Singer Michelle Shocked Shocks San Franscisco Audience By Telling Them "God Hates Fags"

Complicated story I can't come up with a take on.

I can't name a single song of hers but I do know the name of an album, Short Sharp Shocked, because it was relentlessly promoted by the music industry and by the media. Shocked was a woman, a left-winger, and a lesbian; what wasn't to love?

Per Twitchy, she was recently arrested for failing to disperse at an Occupy rally.

But she's a left-wing firebrand who agrees with Fred Phelps that god hates fags.

You can go on Twitter and say Michelle Shocked said ‘God hates fags,’” the singer railed, from the stage, according to witnesses, the conclusion of a monologue about the evils of gay marriage and overturning California’s Proposition 8, which legally defines marriage as a union between a woman and man. “When they stop Prop 8 and force priests at gunpoint to marry gays, it will be the downfall of civilization, and Jesus will come back.”

To add insult to, well, insult, Shocked was performing in the very liberal—and very gay friendly—San Francisco. The operator of the venue, Yoshi’s, interrupted the performance, saying that, as a gay man, he could not allow Shocked to continue and demanded she leave the stage. He was likely as confused as many of her fans were. What had happened to the open, anti-establishment, progressive Michelle Shocked they had fallen in love with?

Previously she expressed some conflict between her sexual choices and her Christian conversion:

“There are some inconvenient truths that I’m now a born again, sanctified, saved-in-the-blood Christian,” she told the Dallas Voice in 2008. “So much of what’s said and done in the name of that Christianity is appalling. According to my Bible, which I didn’t write, homosexuality is immoral. But homosexuality is no more or less a sin than fornication. And I’m a fornicator with a capital F.”

But she seems to have resolved the conflict, and not in a way that her largely gay, entirely left-wing crunchy-folky remaining fans seem to like:

She performed at the Wild Goose festival in 2011, and lashed out at an audience member who asked her about homosexuality. “Who drafted me as a gay icon?” she said. “You are looking at the world’s greatest homophobe. Ask God what He thinks.”

It almost goes without saying that nine of her upcoming tour dates have been cancelled by the venues themselves.

I really can't come up with any take on this. The best I can do is, "People are complicated things."

Difficult Question: If her music was previously worthy, has it become unworthy now that she's a homophobe?

Left wing people claim that it doesn't matter, and relentlessly mock the right for our boycotts and refusal to buy into entertainments made by people who clearly hate us. At least, left wing people claim this so long as it's right wing values being gored; the moment someone gores the left wing's ox, they boycott like crazy.

So: Does it matter or not?

Tangentially related is the story of The Education of Little Tree, originally published as the nonfiction retelling of Indian stories about Indian values (nature, etc.) heard from a Cherokee, and widely acclaimed.

Because, how could liberal reviewers not praise it? It touches all their erogenous zones in the right order and with the right degree of intensity.

But it turns out the book was written by a former Ku Klux Klansman whose connection to Cherokees seems to be of the Elizabeth Warren variety.

So: Is the book still good?

Corrected: I thought I read that she invited people to "look it up," regarding God's views on homosexuality. I can't seem to find that reference now so I've deleted it from the headline.

posted by Ace at 03:59 PM

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