Last week in San Francisco, folk singer Michelle Shocked made headlines after she
went on an anti-gay tirade during the second half of her show at San
Francisco club Yoshi, Meow Online reports:

Michelle
Shocked, known for living up to her surname, cleared out San Francisco
club Yoshi’s last night, and shut down the venue, after she went on an
anti-gay tirade, which she summed up by saying, ”You can go on Twitter
and say ‘Michelle Shocked says God hates fags.’”

Now  her  “God hates fags” rant on Sunday night has caused 10 of the 11 venues at which she had planned concert dates on her tour to cancel, Billboard reports:

The Guardian reports, “Michelle Shocked has responded to reports that she went on a homophobic rant at a recent gig, insisting she has been misunderstood. “My support for the LGBT community … has never wavered,” she said in an open letter sent out by her publicist, claiming she was simply trying to speak up for “Christians with opinions I in no way share”.

“I
do not, nor have I ever, said or believed that God hates homosexuals
(or anyone else),” Shocked wrote on Wednesday. “I said that some of His
followers believe that.”

Unfortunately for Shocked, her statement follows the release of audio from the 17 March show, obtained by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. While the recording is a little hard to follow, Shocked clearly drew a line between California‘s gay marriage
legislation and a Christian apocalypse. “From their vantage point – and
I really shouldn’t say ‘their’, because it’s mine too – we are nearly
at the end of time,” she is heard to say, “and from our vantage point,
we’re gonna be – I think maybe Chinese water torture is going to be the
method. Once Prop 8 gets [repealed] and once preachers are held at
gunpoint and forced to marry the homosexuals, I’m pretty sure that that
will be the signal for Jesus to come on back.”  (WTF???)

“To those fans who are disappointed by what they’ve heard or think I
said, I’m very sorry,” Shocked wrote. “I don’t always express myself as
clearly as I should … I’d like to say this was a publicity stunt, but
I’m really not that clever, and I’m definitely not that cynical.”