Not even a full day after alt-folk singer Michelle Shocked went on a bizarre homophobic rant during a show at a San Francisco jazz club and restaurant, a number of venues across the country moved to cancel the singer's upcoming gigs.
Evanston SPACE, located just north of Chicago in Evanston, Ill., on Monday afternoon announced that Shocked's May 5 show at their venue had been canceled and refunds to ticketholders would be issued in response to the singer's anti-gay remarks.
"After speaking with the promoter of that show about the nature of the remarks, it's clear that this is no longer a show we're willing to put our name on," the venue announced via its Facebook page in a status update that received over 600 "likes" in support as of Tuesday afternoon.
At Yoshi's on Sunday night, Shocked -- a born-again Christian who gained popularity in the '80s and '90s and two decades ago identified as bisexual, according to the Windy City Times -- said she "live[s] in fear that the world will be destroyed if gays are allowed to marry." She went on to urge a stunned audience they could "go on Twitter and say Michelle Shocked said ‘God hates fags,'" according to reports.
Other venues are taking similar action. Boulder, Colo. radio show eTown on Monday canceled a Shocked concert planned for May. The Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Ore., and Moe's Alley in Santa Cruz, Ca., are among the other venues that have also canceled upcoming Shocked shows.
A Change.org petition has also been launched urging other "equality-minded" music venues to cancel their upcoming Shocked shows. As of Tuesday afternoon, the petition has over 2,000 supporters. Shocked's website still lists a number of other tour dates scheduled for the coming months.
"Freedom of speech and artistic expression are critically important, but this isn't free speech. This is hate speech," petition author John Becker writes on the petition introduction.
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