In a Facebook post Tuesday, Violinist Itzhak Perlman canceled his May 18 performance in Raleigh.
Advertisement
Speaking by phone Wednesday, Perlman said he had been contemplating a cancellation and its repercussions for weeks.
“As such, after great consideration, I have chose to cancel my May 18th concert in North Carolina with the North Carolina Symphony as a stand against House Bill 2”.
Elton went on to note that his own organisation, the Elton John AIDS Foundation, aims to support the very LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) community the law alienates, and by contrast, the bill only serves to further encourage discrimination and further stigmatise the transgender community.
Forcing trans students to use bathrooms corresponding to their birth certificates is inconvenient, impractical, potentially traumatic, even unsafe, he wrote. ‘And then I thought, ‘Well, what’s going to happen to the orchestra musicians? He said the Symphony handled the situation well: “they understood when I said I was going to come, and they understood when I said I was not going to come”. As Attorney General Loretta Lynch recently stated, HB2 “is about a great deal more than just bathrooms”.
The North Carolina Symphony canceled its appearance and published Perlman’s statement on its website. “We are dealing with the equality and dignity of citizens”.
Advertisement
“Having attended a few Elton John concerts since 1974, I am obviously a fan of his music but his own left-wing political views, shared by President Obama, are respectfully different when it comes to common-sense expectations of privacy in locker rooms, rest rooms and showers – especially in our schools”, the statement said. Starting in Raleigh on Monday, and continuing in Greenville on Wednesday and on to Charlotte on Thursday, “Women for the Repeal of HB2” has been featuring a diverse range of women’s voices, experiences and concerns calling for full repeal of this discriminatory law.
