Singer's Gay Marriage Remarks Lead to McCabe's Cancellation

Updated at 9:35 p.m.

McCabe's Guitar Shop has canceled alternative folk singer Michelle Shocked’s upcoming performance following reports she made an anti-gay slur during a concert in San Francisco.

The local venue told Patch it was not ready and was too busy refunding Saturday's tickets to release a statement on its decision. Its booking manager Lincoln Myerson told Yahoo! Music blogger Chris Willman  he was inundated with phone messages and emails demanding he cancel the sold-out show.

Myerson was reluctant, according to Yahoo! "As a friend, I would like to hear whatever she has to say," he told Willman. "But I don't want to charge an admission price for that."

At least nine other shows, including in Novato, Santa Cruz and Telluride, CO, have been canceled.

Yoshi's San Francisco reportedly pulled the plug on Shocked's March 17 performance mid-set as she made comments about gay marriage that ended with, "You are going to leave here and tell people, 'Michelle Shocked said God hates [gays.]"

The born-again Christian attends the Pentecostal West Angeles Church of God in Christ, but was until recently better known as a liberal punk singer and activist.

On the cover of her 1998 album Short Sharp Shocked, she is pictured in a police chokehold, and according to the Daily Beast, Shocked was arrested at an Occupy Los Angeles demonstration in 2011. "She raged against the Bush administration after 9/11, telling an audience at a concert in 2003 that 'Bush should have pulled out of Iraq like his father should have.'"

A 1990 interview with OutLines led many fans to believe she was gay. According to the Dallas Voice, she said, "I was with my first woman lover about a year and a half ago... the real pressures of coming out of the closet had been if you had certain problems identifying yourself one way or the other."

Many Facebook users thanked McCabe's for cancelling the show. 

Mickey Fielding: I applaud your stand, McCabe's. She may have the right to free speech, but we also have the right to reject her for her hate-based speech.

Michelle Friedman: Oh Michelle : (. Still love the artist that she was...

Danny Nicassio: Former fan here. Thank you.

What do you think of McCabe’s decision to cancel Shocked’s March 23 show?