We here at SorryWatch HQ are baffled by Michelle Shocked’s outburst and apology. Susan and I don’t often disagree (this time we did) and we don’t often change our minds about whether an apology is good (this time we did).
If you inexplicably do not have Facebook or you live with the lichen, here’s what happened:
This past Sunday, Shocked was performing at Yoshi’s in the Fillmore in San Francisco. According to the most detailed account of the proceedings, published in the Bay Area Reporter (a longtime — since 1971! — local LGBT community newspaper), Shocked announced at the beginning of her first set that there was an invisible man onstage (Jesus?) and that she needed an avatar. The audience was confused.
During her second set, Shocked said, “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.” Audience members gasped, heckled, walked out. They yelled comments and questions; in response, Shocked invoked the Bible. When one woman shouted, “Don’t say that shit in San Francisco!” Shocked replied, “Where do I go to say it?” As people left their seats, Shocked smiled and said, “You are going to leave here and tell people ‘Michelle Shocked said God hates faggots.'” At that point, wrote the Bay Area Reporter,
A Yoshi’s manager announced, “Thank you for coming ladies and gentlemen. This show is over.”
“It’s not over,” Shocked protested and she continued to sing. Management cut off her microphone and shut off the stage lights. Shocked continued to sing for her few remaining fans.
At the very end of the evening, with only a few people remaining and with the sound system turned off, Shocked began to sob and ran offstage.
What made her outbursts particularly shocking (sorry — at least I kept it out of the headline) is that she began her career as a feminist, leftist-to-radical folkie. She had a huge lesbian fan base, though she never really came out. (She made teasing comments about not liking labels, once referred to having had a female lover, and rocked an androgynous look – close enough for Lilith Fair.) At some point in the late ’90s she became born again. In 2008, she told the Dallas Voice, an LGBT newspaper,
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. 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.
In the same interview, she said she was honored to be called “an honorary lesbian.”
Some of my friends were huge Shocked fans in the early 90s. Everyone knew, even then, in the pre-Internet pre-crazy-gossip-culture days, that she was as fragile as she seemed fierce. She was open about having been committed to a psychiatric hospital as a teenager, and at having been raped while hitchhiking through Europe as a homeless kid in the 80s. Her fans worried about her, as they would a friend.
Yesterday she issued a lengthy apology, and then an addendum, through The Texas Observer:
AN OPEN LETTER FROM MICHELLE SHOCKED
I do not, nor have I ever, said or believed that God hates homosexuals (or anyone else). I said that some of His followers believe that. I believe intolerance comes from fear, and these folks are genuinely scared. When I said “Twitter that Michelle Shocked says “God hates faggots,” I was predicting the absurd way my description of, my apology for, the intolerant would no doubt be misinterpreted. The show was all music, and the audience tweets said they enjoyed it. The commentary came about ten minutes later, in the encore.
And to those fans who are disappointed by what they’ve heard or think I said, I’m very sorry: I don’t always express myself as clearly as I should. But don’t believe everything you read on facebook or twitter. My view of homosexualty has changed not one iota. I judge not. And my statement equating repeal of Prop 8 with the coming of the End Times was neither literal nor ironic: it was a description of how some folks – not me – feel about gay marriage.
The show, and the rant, was spontaneous. As for those applauding my so-called stance that “God Hates Faggots,” I say they should be met with mercy, not hate. And I hope that what remains of my audience will meet that intolerance with understanding, even of those who might hate them.
Folks wonder about my sexuality, but denying being gay is like saying I never beat my husband. My sexuality is not at issue. What is being questioned is my support for the LGBT community, and that has never wavered. Music and activism have always been part of my work and my journey, which I hope and intend to continue. I’d like to say this was a publicity stunt, but I’m really not that clever, and I’m definitely not that cynical.
But I am damn sorry. If I could repeat the evening, I would make a clearer distinction between a set of beliefs I abhor, and my human sympathy for the folks who hold them. I say this not because I want to look better. I have no wish to hide my faults, and – clearly – I couldn’t if I tried.
With love, Michelle
FOLLOW-UP STATEMENT:
I believe in a God who loves everyone, and my faith tells me to do my best to also love everyone. Everyone: gay or straight, stridently gay, self-righteously faithful; left or right, far left, far right; good, bad, or indifferent. That’s the law: everyone.
I may disagree with someone’s most fervently held belief, but I will not hate them. And in this controversy, that means speaking for Christians with opinions I in no way share about homosexuality. Will I endorse them? Never. Will I disavow them? Never.
I stand accused of forsaking the LGBT community for a Christianity which is – hear me now – anathema to my understanding of faith. I will no doubt take future flack for saying so. I’m accused of believing that “God hates fags” and that the repeal of Prop 8 will usher in the End Times. Well, if I caused such an absurdity, I am damn sorry. To be clear: I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any so-called faith preaching intolerance of anyone. Again, anyone: straight or gay, believers or not: that’s the law.
That means upholding my punk rock values in the most evangelical enclaves and, in this case, speaking up for the most fearful of fundamentalists in, well, a San Francisco music hall full of Michelle Shocked fans.
As an artist in this time of unbearable culture wars, I understand: this means trouble, and this is neither the first nor last time trouble has come my way. And that’s fine by me.
I know the fear many in the evangelical community feel about homosexual marriage, as I understand the fear many in the gay community feel toward the self-appointed faithful. I have and will continue speaking to both. Everything else – facebook, twitter, whatever – is commentary.
My esteemed co-writer Susan felt at first that this was a heartfelt, heartbreaking apology. She said:
I find her explanation believable, whatever the audience thought. She expressed herself incompetently. Spontaneously and clumsily. The part where she says “”You are going to leave here and tell people ‘Michelle Shocked said God hates faggots,'” just fills me with despair over the failure to communicate. (I remember going to a Cyndi Lauper show where she was babbling about flambeed food, and told an incomprehensible joke that ended with “flambee!” I don’t think anyone understood, but IT WASN’T A TOUCHY SUBJECT so the supportive woohooing continued.)
So I think it’s a pretty good apology. I would raise an eyebrow at “the audience tweet said they enjoyed it” as the equivalent of “I got supportive email” And “what remains of my audience” — poor misunderstood me, or another dry joke?
But her basic stance of including the haters in one’s comprehension — and insisting on making that point even after she gets in hot water — is an honorable one.
I think.
However, Susan hadn’t known that Shocked had made at least one public homophobic comment in the past. Me, I thought Shocked’s explanation strained credulity. I felt that the notion that she herself didn’t FEEL the hate, that she was merely mimicking the words of her fundamentalist compatriots, was unbelievable; I saw the apology as an attempt to salvage a career and retain both old and new fans My friend Daniel Radosh, author of the excellent book Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture
I think what she’s saying is that she wasn’t mimicking so much as channeling. Here’s my best effort at a paraphrase: “You have to understand that these Christians you hate aren’t bad people, they just believe what they’ve learned in the Bible. Try to see it from their point of view: ‘I don’t hate gays because I’m mean or a bad person. I just really, honestly believe that God hates fags and that accepting gay marriage will send the country to hell. So I have to be against it.'”
Daniel added in an email, “My concern is that even read charitably, the thrust of her comments is a defense of anti-gay attitudes. And her own attitude seems to be that she too is against equal rights for gay people and thinks homosexuality is a sin — but it’s OK because she loves gay people the same as she loves all sinners.”
So how do we rate her apology? I do think the initial outburst was too inflammatory and context-free to be some sort of point-proving exercise. We humans cannot know exactly what goes on in someone else’s head; we only have the words and past behaviors to go on. Which means that at this point, Susan and I can’t decide if it’s a good apology. It’s oblique and confused, made more so by a close reading of Shocked’s personal history. Frankly, both of us are too worried about Shocked’s mental state truly to parse her words. It seems churlish to rate an apology when it feels like we’re watching a troubled human being melt down.
UPDATE, 3/21: This interview Shocked conducted with SPIN magazine seems to indicate she really is not well. In it, in the midst of some very paranoid behavior and responses that don’t make much sense, she backs away further from real apology. But I don’t feel good analyzing any of it. I hope someone close to her, someone with nothing to gain, can help her.
A human being melting down? YES. Yes, yes, yes.
While I don’t indeed have FB, I have avoided the lichen, and read this in the Chronicle the other morning – kind of gobsmacked. I wasn’t hip to this woman’s popularity back in the day, but I had heard her name before, and people were just gobsmacked and baffled by this — and hurt, so incredibly, incredibly hurt. And, now it seems, so is she.
I much appreciate Daniel Radosh’s comments; I can claim my childhood Christianity with pride but not the homo/xeno/other phobia that is, thanks to the huge Evangelical Christian movement, largely associated with the word “Christian” nowadays. One hopes the faith of adulthood puts away childish things, including incomplete understandings – or at least works toward more complete understandings. This is what it seems that Shocked was trying to do – like Anne Lamott, maybe: to talk about the realities and the fears, however baldly and badly. In light of Radosh’s paraphrase, I understand, at least a little, what Shocked was trying to say, now that she’s apparently some sort of Evangelical and entered into that insanity. She’s in a weird place, still trying to be a pop-culture person, and walk a line that someone else has painted for her. No wonder it all seems like a cry for help (like much of what Glen Beck says: a clear cry for help from a very troubled mind. It’s a shame when one’s faith helps make them crazy, but honestly? It’s not the first time).
I understand people’s rage, though, and their feeling that this apology isn’t genuine. I lost a lesbian friend in grad school when she learned that not only had I grown up a Christian, but that I still claimed a faith – she felt that my faith was anathema to my being a genuine, good person, and with a word ended a two-year friendship, which was completely baffling and hurtful to me — but, boy, now do I see and understand. Poor Ms. Shocked. This whole thing is just ugly. I can only hope that this opens up real dialogue, but I’m afraid this wound between the LGBTQ community and many, many Evangelical Christians (not all, but those who claim that title) is too deep for just “I’m sorrys.”
(I also apologize for writing you an entire book.)
Don’t apologize! That’s very interesting. (Speaking as a dweller among the lichen myself.)
Plus, she means “flak,” not “flack.” (Anti-aircraft fire, not a public-relations person.)
It looks like she finally Shocked us.
There…I said it
Neither apology includes a credible explanation of why she said what she said. Without that her career is in serious trouble, whatever else we think about the quality of these apologies.
The woman is not well, and sounds to me as if she’s in pain. When I first heard of this, I was outraged. And since I know of her history as provocateur, it seemed to me as if she’d changed allegiances but remained a drama queen. But the more I learn the less sure of that I’ve become.
I think your bottom line is the bottom line.
“It seems churlish to rate an apology when it feels like we’re watching a troubled human being melt down.”
See also her unhinged Spin interview. I think in the past Shocked has tried to balance her evangelical Christianity with her leftist-warrior identity, with varying degrees of success. I didn’t find the apology satisfactory either, but the more I read about this, the more I worry, honestly, that she’s not mentally well. To me, this doesn’t look like somebody expressing her belief system; it looks like somebody having a breakdown.
I’m very curious if there are any documented cases of Shocked “upholding her punk rock values in the most evangelical enclaves.”
As someone with a seminary education in a liberal Christian tradition, my most forgiving perspective is that she was trying (however poorly) to be prophetic in the biblical sense. The fact that she chose San Francisco to give people views of another way of thinking is not lost on me, but I strongly doubt that she has equally shocked her Evangelical comrades with a counter point of view.
Here is the audio. https://soundcloud.com/therealtofuandwhiskey/michelle-shocked-2nd-yoshis
Wow, David. Thanks so much for that. She really is completely melting down.
Thanks, all, for this convo. It’s really hard to have a foot in two worlds…especially when you’re clearly a fragile person already.
Tanita, I especially appreciate your “book.” (You guys, Tanita is an actual superb novelist I hope to meet in actual person one day.)
(Gosh, thanks!!)
I, too, would have loved to see evidence of this woman trying to carry her warrior-feminist-advocacy message into the Evangelical arena!
I do think this is about straddling conflicting worlds – and failing. :unhappy sigh:
How can I unlearn about this whole thing so I can go back to loving “Short Sharp Shocked”?
maybe you take a page from the mantra to “hate the sin, love the sinner”? 🙂 and by extension that wonderful album.
Well, Erik, I’m a Jew and I listen to Wagner.
(I updated the post to reflect the SPIN interview Gavin pointed us to.)