The legendary San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus is under fire for a satirical video and song they posted.
The chorus posted a satirical song called A Message From The Gay Community which jokingly confirmed that the constant suggestions that ‘gay people were coming to convert children’ are indeed true.
The lyrics of the song includes the line “We’ll convert your children, happens bit by bit, quietly and subtlety, and you will barely notice it.”
What the chorus is converting children to however is being tolerant and understanding, respecting other people, being kinder and learning not to hate.
The song however has set some people off, and the choir and it’s members have faced a deluge of criticism, accusations of child grooming and threats of violence.
“We have received emails, phone messages, threats across all of our social media platforms — not just the chorus, but the staff, as well as the soloists who were featured in the song,” SF Gay Men’s Chorus executive director Chris Verdugo told SFist Thursday. “The [Youtube] comment that continues to stick out in my head is the one that said ‘We’re going to put lead in your head.'”
Individual choir members have also faced people contacting their employers accusing them of employing pedophiles.
“Someone on Twitter took a screenshot of the singing members of the chorus and created a spreadsheet and was starting to identify them,” he added. “Some of our members’ jobs were contacted saying, ‘Do you know you have a pedophile working for you?’ or things of that nature. Singers on their social media have been getting threats. It’s been a harrowing 36 hours.” Verdugo said.
Online a stream of posts suggested that individual members of the choir were convicted child sex offenders and linked choir members to people with similar names on public sex offender registers, even though the images associated with registers clearly showed distinctly different people.
The chorus is now working with police and the FBI to track down the people behind the threats.
Australian Sky News commentator Rita Panahi has shared her thoughts on the controversy, saying San Francisco is hardly a tolerant place.
“They say they’re going to convert your children to be more tolerant, but if you want to see tolerance I wouldn’t suggest you go to San Francisco as it’s one of the most intolerant, go walking around San Francisco with a Trump hat and see how tolerant folks are. They’re pretty much violently opposed to half the population of the country.”
Fellow host James Morrow said he believed the video was actually satirical.
“I think if you listen to the lyrics closely they say things about tolerance and all that sort of thing. I will give them a little bit of credit because the left have no exactly been for the last decade or two the most fulsomely humorous people in the world. So if they’ve rediscovered the art of satire to poke fun at their opponents on the other side of politics I’m not so hugely against it.”
One person who could not identify satire in the video was Binary director Kirralie Smith.
“The extremist agenda is to convert children and aggressively promote the radical gender agenda in schools, libraries and the media.
“They have been relentlessly coming after our kids since the de-gendering of marriage.” Smith posted to her website demanding the chorus issue a formal apology over the video.
OIP Staff 13-07-21 7:39 comment from Kirralie Smith added.Â
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