Sam Smith, Kim Petras and their entourage at The Grammy Awards

Right-wing hysteria over ‘Unholy’ Grammy performance rings hollow

So. Gay man Sam Smith and transgender woman Kim Petras won the 2023 Grammy for Best Pop Duo this past week for their song “Unholy.” Their win made history because Kim is the first trans person to win a Grammy.

In addition to making history, the two made quite the entrance, as well. They showed up on the red carpet in matching outfits — matching, at least, in that they were both dressed head-to-toe in devil red — accompanied by an entourage of gorgeous gender-bending men and women who were all also dressed in that same devil red.

Sam and Kim also performed their winning song, wearing red and bathed in an “unholy” red light, Sam even wearing his red top hat with devil horns.

And y’all… The right-wingers have lost their minds.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, that bastion of true Christian values, tweeted: “The Grammy’s featured Sam Smith’s demonic performance and was sponsored by Pfizer. And the Satanic Church now has an abortion clinic in NM that requires its patients to perform a satanic ritual before services. American Christians need to get to work.”

Donald Trump Jr. decried the “demonic performance,” claiming that Hollywood and the entertainment industry are into Satanic rituals.

And then there was Ted Cruz’s take: “This…is…evil”.

That last one — good ol’ Ted’s tweet — was the one that, for me, really summed up the hypocrisy and the, yes, real evil of the Marjories and the Don Jrs and the Teds, and so on.

Some performers get up on stage wearing red clothes and a top hat with horns and sing a song about a man cheating on his wife and his mistress using him as a sugar daddy — and that is what they call “evil” and “demonic” and a “threat to Christianity.”

And that is proof of why these three and those like them are the real threat to our country, our young people and even to Christianity. Songs about infidelity and singers and dancers playing dress up are NOT evil. Hell, I don’t even think cheating on your spouse (Marge and Don Jr.) or using drugs (Don Jr.?) is necessarily evil. Not really OK on the whole list of Christian dos and don’ts, maybe, but not evil.

Hopping on a plane to head to sunny Cancun while leaving the rest of Texas and even your dog to suffer through the worst winter storm in decades — well, while that’s not demonic, per se, it is a little closer to what I would call “evil.”

But you want to know what is true evil in my book? It is pretty evil to get on social media and make fun of an 82-year-old man who was attacked and beaten with a hammer by some lunatic spurred on by hateful right-wing rhetoric and to spread hurtful lies about the facts of that attack.

It is evil to target transgender children and deny them access to life-saving healthcare and to threaten their loving families with criminal prosecution because either you think you have the right to impose your twisted religious beliefs on the rest of us or you are a politician pandering to people with twisted religious beliefs.

It is evil to tell women they have no right to control their own bodies and make their own medical and reproductive decisions.

It is evil to insist that it is your God-given right to own any and every gun ever made because “Freedom!” or to be a politician kissing the gun-lobby’s ass to keep getting their money while blocking reasonable gun laws allowing people to continue dying needlessly in gun violence.

According to the Gun Violence Archives (GunViolenceArchive.org), in just the first 38 days of 2023, 4,534 people have died through gun violence. There have been 25 children under age 11 and 158 children ages 12-17 among those 4,534 dead. Another 419 children ages 0-17 have been injured. In just the first 38 days of this year, there have been six mass murders claiming 42 lives.

IN JUST THE FIRST 38 DAYS!

In 2022, the year of the Uvalde elementary school shooting, 44,305 people were killed in gun violence. There were 1,676 children ages 0-17 killed by guns in 2022, and there were 36 mass murders.

And yet, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Jr. and all the others like them deliberately stand in the way of fair and common sense laws that could help bring those numbers down because they care about money and power far more than they care about people.

That is evil. True evil.

And as far as I am concerned, these hypocrites can shove their hysteria over Sam Smith’s horned top hat and red leather pants right up their hypocritical, lying asses.

Tammye Nash is managing editor of Dallas Voice. The opinions expressed here are their own.