Tori Amos is doing promo interviews for her new record Night of Hunters, and in her talk with PrideSource, she addressed a few topics we deal with quite frequently around here.
On legislation banning marriage for gays and lesbians in North Carolina:
If anybody calls themselves a Christian, I don’t see how you can ban consenting adults. I just don’t understand how you can see yourself as Christian and have no compassion for another person’s path. It goes against the Christ-like energy and light that I was brought up with.
My mother and father, they’re both Southern, have opened up, especially my dad. He had to really stretch as a Methodist minister, but he’s embraced the idea that gay people deserve rights. I’m really proud of him that, as a Methodist minister, he was able to make that shift and see that he did need to see it differently.
He took me to a gay bar when I was 13. He’s come a long way, so let’s put it that way. So I think there’s hope for people who are judgmental, but what they have to say themselves is, how can they call themselves a Christian and then insist that gay people don’t have the right to be married? Then gay people shouldn’t have to pay taxes in the state of Carolina!
On bullied gay teens and teen suicide:
[I]t is the end of the world to them. When you are being bullied because of who you are, the shame of that is so great that it does seem like the end of the world and like they’re not accepted in this world – and they’re not being accepted by part of this world. And yet, the people that are not accepting them and bullying them call themselves Christian, and that is a lie. You are not a Christian if you treat people like that. I don’t care what office you’re running for. You just are not. That is not the definition of walking the Christ-like path.
When artists say it’s not the end of the world, I don’t know if that’s the approach. I think the approach is acknowledging what they’re feeling and hopefully creating a space where people feeling bullied can go to.
This next election, it’s so important the gay community become very aware of what’s going on and be very proactive about your rights as human beings. The fact that gay people are not treated as if they’re human beings by some of these people who are running for office, it’s barbaric. Whatever you think I am, I would like to be in a society where we’re enlightened, and I just find it all very primitive and that we’re regressing mentally.
She knows what she’s talking about.
Here’s my [current] favorite song from her new record. Go buy it.
