The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus put out a satirical music video that mocks the bigoted right wing belief that gay people will convert children to being gay.
The song, “A Message from the Gay Community,” includes the lyrics: “We’ll convert your children” and “We’re coming for your children” not for carnal pleasure, but rather tolerance, notes the SFist:
We’ll convert your children, We’ll make them tolerant and fair…
Learn to love / Learn to love / Face your fate/ We’ll convert your children, someone’s gotta teach them not to hate…
Your children will care about / Fairness and justice for others / Your children will work to convert / All their sisters and brothers
The Bay Area Reporter notes the office of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus is closed “out of an abundance of caution” because of death threats spurred on by Alex Jones’ right wing conspiracy site InfoWars. Jack Hadfield of the right wing National File also tried to spread fear about the video, which he called “sick,” on Twitter.
Director of the chorus, Chris Verdugo, said the video had to be set to private-only mode, reports Yahoo News:
We are the first gay men’s chorus on the planet. … We are a social justice organization … so it’s very difficult for us to decide to take down that video. But the soloists — who are not in the chorus but, in their own right, rising Broadway stars, have received death threats.
Yahoo News also reports the gay men’s chorus Facebook page has been pelted with homophobic hate:
There was no shortage of people trolling the chorus’s Facebook page, though, with comments on a July 6 post that the chorus was returning to in-person rehearsals that included, “You have revealed yourselves as evil. Now everyone will know what we are really up against”; “You’re [sic] video is absolutely disturbing, disgusting and flat out horrifying”; “From ‘We just want to get married’ to singing about grooming children”; and “Disgraceful, disgusting, and of course degenerate.”
(Sources: SFist, The Bay Area Reporter, Jack Hadfield/Twitter, Yahoo News, Southern Poverty L:aw Center)