With her career in apparent danger of imploding, folk singer Michelle Shocked issued a statement today insisting that she is not anti-gay and that remarks she made at a show last weekend were utterly misconstrued. "I do not, nor have I ever, said or believed that God hates homosexuals (or anyone else)," she writes in the statement, which Paste Magazine has in full. "I said that some of His followers believe that." At another point: "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. ... 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 brouhaha started Sunday in San Francisco, when audience-goers said the born-again Christian declared, "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," as recounted by USA Today. "You can go on Twitter and say, 'Michelle Shocked says God hates (anti-gay slur).'" Shocked now says her intent was to explain that the "intolerant" hate gay marriage because they are "genuinely scared" and that the statement about Twitter was a prediction of how her remarks would be misinterpreted. If so, it wasn't clear that night. The venue's owner shut down the show, social media exploded, and most of Shocked's upcoming concerts have been canceled—a development helped along by a Change.org petition. Click for more on the controversy. (More Michelle Shocked stories.)
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