Screenshot via YouTube.
A video clip of 76-year-old rocker Carlos Santana making transphobic comments during a concert in this resort city has surfaced this week.
In a clip posted online to multiple social media platforms, the musician can be heard saying: “When God made you and me, before we came out of the womb, you know who you are and what you are. Later on, when you grow out of it, you see things, and you start believing that you could be something that sounds good, but you know it ain’t right. Because a woman is a woman and a man is a man. That’s it. Whatever you wanna do in the closet, that’s your business. I’m OK with that.”
Then the Grammy Award-winning guitarist is heard saying as a follow-up to his previous statement making a hand gesture, ”I am like this with my brother Dave Chappelle.”
Chappelle is a comedian known for his controversial social commentary, and has come under fire for telling transphobic jokes. Anti-transgender jokes in Chappelle’s Netflix special “The Closer” sparked further controversy, and caused The Duke Ellington School for the Arts in Washington D.C. to reconsider officially renaming its theater after Chappelle, the school’s most famous alumni, as had been expected.
On Aug. 24, in a post on his Facebook page, he apologized:
NBC News Out reported that in recent weeks, several other rock musicians have added to the conversation with similar comments. Paul Stanley of KISS and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister have both been criticized for describing gender-affirming care for kids as a “sad and dangerous fad.” (Snider was consequently dropped off of the lineup for San Francisco Pride.)
Alice Cooper also offered his two cents on the matter in a recent interview with Stereogum: “I’m understanding that there are cases of transgender, but I’m afraid that it’s also a fad,” he said. “I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be.’”
Santana’s comments come as upwards of 500 anti-LGBTQ bills circulate across legislatures in the U.S., as tracked by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU explains that many of these proposals are directly focused at transgender youth.
Current statistics from Pew Research Center show transgender people are more visible than they used to be, with about 5% of Americans younger than 30 identifying as trans or nonbinary — but data shows violence against trans people is high.
According to an Anti-Defamation League report on Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate & Extremism Incidents, 2022-23, 138 of the 356 total incidents of violence or harassment were targeting drag events and performers. While not all people who perform at or support drag events are transgender, the two communities are historically intrinsically linked.
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