Same-sex kiss cancels Malaysia festival, days after cancellation of Indonesia conference
Southeast Asian nations keep pursuing their repressive anti-gay agendas
An onstage kiss paired with criticism of Malaysia’s anti-LGBT laws led to the immediate shutdown of Friday’s concert by the British band The 1975 and the prompt cancellation of the Kuala Lumpur music festival they were part of.
Next, the band’s is scheduled to play Sunday in Jakarta, Indonesia, where anti-LGBT threats led to the cancellation of this past week’s planned ASEAN SOGIE Caucus’s Queer Advocacy Week, which had been scheduled to start last Monday. [Update: The band later announced it would cancel its Sunday show in Jakarta and a Tuesday show in generally LGBTQ-friendly Taiwan.]
The 1975 band previously challenged the anti-LGBT laws of the United Arab Emirates, when lead singer Matty Healy kissed a male fan during a 2019 concert.
“The interruption is far from Healy’s first onstage stunt, and the singer is no stranger to controversy,” Insider.com reported. “Earlier this year, in January, he appeared to do a Nazi salute shortly after calling Irish people ‘simple’ at a Dublin concert, according to reporting from The Independent. In May, Healy came under heavy fire for a podcast interview where he said he masturbated to porn of “brutalized” women and made derogatory comments about Asian people. ”
Malaysia: Music festival canceled over same-sex kiss onstage
Malaysia halted The Good Vibes music festival on Saturday, after two UK band members of the same sex kissed on stage.
The festival is a three-day event hosted in Kuala Lumpur where major international bands were to perform.
The abrupt cancelation of the festival came after frontman of British pop rock band ‘The 1975’ publicly criticized the country’s anti-LGBT position and kissed his male bandmate onstage.
Malaysia, a muslim-majority country, considers homosexuality a crime which is punishable by imprisonment.
The 1975 have now been banned from performing in the country, said a government committee that oversees performances by foreigners.
Healy’s onstage protest
While on stage on Friday, Matty Healy told the audience that the band had considered pulling out of the show but did not want to disappoint Malaysian fans.
“I do not see the point of inviting The 1975 to a country and then telling us who we can have sex with,” he said.
After his speech Healy was seen kissing the band’s bassist Ross MacDonald.
Later, the band abruptly cut short their performance and Healy said “All right, we gotta go. We just got banned from Kuala Lumpur.”
This is not the first on-stage protest by Healy. In 2019, during a concert in UAE, which also has tough anti-LGBT laws, Healy kissed a male fan.
The organizers of the Good Vibes music festival said that the band had to be taken off stage due to “non-compliance with local performance guidelines.”
