Michelle Shocked’s remaining shows were cancelled after her infamous anti-gay tirade during a weekend performance in San Francisco, Billboard reported Wednesday.
Shocked had 11 concerts remaining on her tour, and all but one venue has pulled out, including Colorado’s Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Shortly after her tour began hemorrhaging gigs this week, Shocked attempted to backtrack on hateful antigay statement’s she’d made during a show at Yoshi’s in San Francisco Sunday. But now that audio of the set has been released, Shocked has nowhere to hide. Her message is loud and clear.
A beloved alternative singer/songwriter in the late ‘80s / early ‘90s, Shocked became born again in the mid-90s. Singer songwriters are often renowned for engaging audiences with stories between songs, and Shocked began her second set at Yoshi’s with tales of praising God. But she soon turned her talk of loving God to that of hating gays. “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,” Shocked told a confused audience. “You can go on Twitter and say ‘Michelle Shocked says God hates fagots.”
It’s clear from the audio that some audience members thought her rant was satire at first. But when one woman in the audience told Shocked, “I hope you get wise Michelle and realize there is nothing to fear,” Shocked exploded in rage.
The woman calmly replied, “Show your true colors.”
Shocked stopped talking and began playing music, but members of the audience had begun shouting they wanted her show shut down. One distraught woman essentially said that it was a violation for Shocked to come to her hometown of San Francisco and say such things.
A man in the audience asked an employee, “Where is the manager of this place to get this moron out of this place?”
Eventually, Yoshi’s management shut the show down. And while it’s clear from the audio that Shocked has her demons, what’s most disturbing are those audience members who supported and applauded her even as she spewed her messages of hate.
Shocked, a member of the Pentecostal West Los Angeles Church of God, has identified as an anarchist, fighting the establishment, for decades, even being arrested as recently as 2011 at an Occupy L.A. protest, according to SFist.
Born into a fundamentalist Mormon family in Dallas, in 1990, Shocked spoke to the Chicago-based publication OutLines about her relationships with women, according to The Dallas Voice.
Once venues began pulling Shocked's shows, she took to her Twitter account to respond to the backlash with one tweet saying, “Most don’t even know what my views on Gays are. What is reported to be my views on Gays isn’t.” And in response to some sympathetic fans, she responded with, “Am neither against a woman’s right to choose nor gay marriage. Am a fundamentalist tho.”
Listen to the audio below. She begins her rant at about the four-minute mark.
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