Well, her name may be Michelle Shocked but we bet a lot of people saw this coming. The alt-folk singer has seen all of her U.S. gigs slip through her guitar strings after she went all Westboro before a crowd in homosexual hotbed, San Francisco.
Shocked told Shocked shocked fans that “she lives in fear that the world will be destroyed if gays are allowed to marry,” that “God hates fags” and yadda-yadda-that-old-folk-song-and-dance.
Before you could say “who said what now?”, a Change.org petition sprung up calling for “equality-minded performance spaces” in the U.S. and Europe to dump the born-again Christian soldier.
“Freedom of speech and artistic expression are critically important, but this isn’t free speech,” the petition states. “This is hate speech.”
How about we take this to the next level?
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The Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Telluride, Colorado — the last date on her U.S. tour — canceled her scheduled appearance, following in the equality-minded footsteps of several other venues in Illinois, Oregon, California and Washington.
Meanwhile, Yoshi’s in San Fran, where Shocked delivered her most memorable performance to date, has banned the singer for life.
sfbeast
So far, haven’t heard if her European dates have been cancelled. Poor thing, must be difficult to be brain-dead like she is.
1EqualityUSA
With little green face paint, she would look like the Wicked Witch in OZ. She was a geek in the past (in a bad way) and nothing has changed.
Derek Williams
What a nutcase.
Gigi Gee
I’m 100% serious. Who?
Dez
What an idiot.
Gays ARE allowed to marry (albeit in certain, more progressive & civilized lands), and the world hasn’t ended.
The only thing that HAS ended is her so-called career.
Ottoman
@Gigi Gee: LOL, Gigi. She was actually pretty famous for about 6 months in the early 90s (can’t remember the year) when her Greener Side video got lots of airplay on MTV and VH1. And she had another song called Anchorage that got college radio play. That’s about it.
Ima chalk this up to an untreated mental illness that’s left her clinging to paranoid delusions, an overbearing boyfriend, and the cult of religion. Lets hope she gets treatment.
Caleb in SC
The crickets coming from her camp speak volumes. She was not being satirical — she was just expressing her religious views through unabashed hate. Great way to cap off a mediocre career!
Aidan8
Michelle Schlock is more like it… Hope all her dates are cancelled. She can go play at mega-churches if she wants to make money.
rand503
I wonder if her european tour included countries that have marriage equality? That would be a hoot — her going right into the direct pit of hell.
anyhoo, I hear that some spots have opened up on NOM’s March on Washington next week. I’m sure an ex-gay folk singer would be most welcomed.
BobSmith5499
Liberalism was birthed in The Enlightenment, and Voltaire was one of its foremost champions. His famous maxim, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” remains as a cornerstone of free thought, which itself is a founding principle of liberalism.
The vehement attack on Ms. Shocked for expressing an out of favor opinion in today’s intolerant and politically correct climate demonstrates quite well that the current politically ascendant class resembles not at all Voltaire and principled liberalism, but rather the apparatchiks of the former Soviet Union, with their rigid dogmatism and their finely honed skill at instilling fear in anyone who dared to dissent.
I’m in favor of gay marriage and gay liberation in general. The time for Sexual Enlightenment has arrived. But that doesn’t mean that all of us must march to the beat of the same drum. In order to protect the principle of free thought, protection of the rights of the benighted is essential. The currently underway sexual paradigm shift won’t be ruined, wrecked or prevented by their protests.
2eo
@BobSmith5499: You’ve really put a lot of effort in copying and pasting that from a blog.
Kudos.
It’s also mind numbing pseudo-intellectual drivel hiding behind the mask of acceptance. You’re not clever enough to disguise it, better than Avenger, but that’s saying disturbingly little.
Cam
@BobSmith5499:
So just so we have this straight let me check with you.
Michelle Shocked should have the right to express any opinion she wants. But the venues she is booked in do NOT have the right to express THEIR free speech? Why don’t you take it one step further and now claim that every person in the United States has to be forced to by her CD’s because that will support her free speech rights.
Interesting how bigots like to claim that they have free speech but freak out when ever anybody else expresses their own free speech and opinions.
Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.
Cam
As for Ms. Shock……
She has ALWAYS been known as a closet case. Her video for “On the Greener Side” was over the top pseudo heterosexual with just a bunch of guys in speedos dancing. It was kind of like Rosie O’Donnell going on and on and on about how in love with Tom Cruise she was when she was a closet case.
Shock is just another self hating closet case. A victim of her Mormon upbringing and her current born again church.
BobSmith5499
@2eo: I take whatever credit, blame or mockery is due for my post. I wrote it myself in probably less than ten minutes. And I stand behind every word of it.
Cam
@BobSmith5499: Said…. “And I stand behind every word of it.”
Which part? The part where you try to dismiss everybody ELSE’s right to free opninion and speech by forcing them to not speak out about their own opinions about Shock? Or the part where you believe that the U.S. should not be a capitalist nation where you seem to declare that venues that do not want to hire her and people that do not want to see her be forced to book her and buy tickets to her show?
BobSmith5499
Any venue owner who chooses not to hire Ms. Shocked may do as he pleases, of course. But one can’t help but notice how closely such a response resembles a McCarthyite blacklist. Far be it for me to suggest that some studio heads in Hollywood acted out of fear, and not principle, when they denied Dalton Trumbo a place at the screenwriting table. They were all simply committed anti-communists, I’m quite sure, just as all the bosses who now won’t hire Shocked are bravely upholding the Holy Chalice of Gay Rights. It’s inspiring, truly inspiring. It almost makes me want to bow my head in prayer.
bridge2nowhere
Michele Shocked is either a complete idiot or mentally ill…maybe a little bit of both. She’s free to have any opinion she wants, but when you openly insult your audience using slurs and religious damnation, what do you think is going to happen?
Yiannis
Lesbian singer Janis Ian has delivered a broadside to Michelle Shocked, who screamed “God Hates Fags” at her San Francisco concert. “”It is sad when a talented person chooses to use that talent in the service of their own misplaced rage, and their disappointment in their own life. I often wonder if people like this die and meet God, who will smack them upside the head and say ‘Did I really LOOK like I needed your help?!”
(From Ed Kennedy’s Meme column in AfterElton)
Cam
@BobSmith5499: said…
“Any venue owner who chooses not to hire Ms. Shocked may do as he pleases, of course. But one can’t help but notice how closely such a response resembles a McCarthyite blacklist”
____________________
Look, you have an agenda, I get it, but the fact is. That tolerating intolerance, is not being tolerant.
You once again, said that others expressing THEIR freedom of speech and opinion with regards to Shocked is McCarthyite, and yet Shocked expressing her opinion against gays is not.
You need to actually take an unbiased look at what you are trying to say, you claim you support gay rights, but obviously you do not because the only excuse for your willful blindness to the contradictions in your comments would be that you are trying to advocate in defense of Shock’s opinions and feel that this is a more subtle way to do it.
If a school teacher says that she believes kids who do not listen should be killed and parents pressure the schools to not put their kids in her class. They are not being McCarthyite. That teacher is reaping the response of others free choice.
Fitz
So– you have to be free to say whatever you want, but you can NOT be free from the consequences of having done so. She did this in Oakland (not SF, but just as liberal), in Yoshis (a huge supporter of progressive issues). It’s the equiv of one of us having anal sex on the dais of her church.
I smell a short period of time until she checks into fake rehab, (outpatient, 30 day max) and then has a photo op at some LGBT church youth group.
vonric
well, lots of ranting about freedom of speech here, and how the quiet and undoubtedly cosmopolitanism audience at the venue in San Francisco should “embrace her right” to free speech… or be labeled witch-hunting McCarthyites….some thoughts in respopnse…
– the implicit contract for the evening was for singing from a pop/folk/rock singer of some apparent capacity, not a socio-moralistic rant on ANY subject from ANY source… left, right or otherwise.
– in fact, this singer, now that she has found her true voice, is free to seek venues that will celebrate her bigotry, maybe even to the point of being part of her “draw”…. and she can certainly move her albums to a “Christian” label. They exist, it is a sub-genre of music, and she can live there with her bigotry and hatred. Perhaps, even, she could explore duets with Ted Nugent.
Aidan8
@BobSmith5499: Voltaire also said: “Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices…” Your recitation re the ascendance of liberalism would be great if people were arguing she has no right to speech. You conflate criticizing the content of her speech with suggesting she not have a right to speak. They are not the same. Since you like Voltaire, I suggest your focus should be on Ms. Shock’s belief in absurdities, her power/influence via the microphone, and her perpetuation of injustices.
Ogre Magi
She is a chrisitan, why is everybody surprised she feels this way/
Aidan8
@Ogre Magi: So true… typically you can always find an evangelical behind stupidity or ignorance.
trojanboy
Of course she has the right to believe whatever deluded drivel she wants to – but I still say we should burn the fucking witch.