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Newly Lucid Michelle Shocked Supports Gay Marriage on CNN

Michelle Shocked Gay Marriage Piers Morgan

It is now very possible, if not likely, that the greater public will be soon be allowed to once again forget Michelle Shocked. In an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan Monday night (April 1) the embattled folk singer stated unequivocally that she is not homophobic and, what’s more, that she supports gay marriage. This after a confusing, seemingly anti-gay rant at a show in San Francisco, a muddled apology, and an chat with SPIN that only confounded matters.

Transcripts and recordings of Shocked’s initial diatribe did very little to clear up the artist’s actual feelings on California’s controversial Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage after the practice had already been made legal. “Once Prop 8 gets instated,” she misspoke, “and once preachers are held at gunpoint, and forced to marry the homosexuals, I’m pretty sure that will be the signal for Jesus to come on back.” She was referring to the Rapture.

But as she has mostly failed to explain since, Shocked claims she was making a point to contrast “truth” versus “reality.” The musician finally makes this clear-ish in her conversation with Morgan. She calls “reality” a “macabre distortion of truth.” As Gawker observes, the distinction is likely, “That while the truth is that gay people are no less deserving of rights than anyone else, the reality is that not everyone agrees with it.” If only she’d actually said those words.

She did, however make a point at the original concert to poll the audience on whether they wanted to hear “truth” or “reality,” and it was only after they asked for the latter that Shocked said anything particularly controversial, batshit or confusing (which, for the record, reality often is). “So you’re not homophobic?” Morgan asks. “No, I’m not homophobic.” “Do you have any problem with gay marriage?” “No, I don’t.” “Do you support full gay rights?” “Absolutely.”

Shortly before that exchange, Shocked expressed an uncharacteristically rational viewpoint: “And I’d like to make it even simpler. I am, for the last 10 years, so deeply in love with a man that the idea of living my life without him is impossible. I know how much I love him, and knowing that passion that I have for him, would I ever want to deny that to someone else? Absolutely not.” Awesome. Now we can forget this exhausting reality and revisit the truth of 1988:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=E70hTw-NJfc%3Frel%3D0