Malaysia Cancels Music Festival Following Matt Healy’s Gay Kissing Stunt
LGBTQ activists worry “The 1975” singer’s recent condemnation of Malaysia's homophobic laws will spark a backlash against the community.
The recent antics of The 1975 frontman Matt Healy at a festival in Kuala Lumpur — where he kissed a male bandmate on stage and slammed Malaysia’s homophobic laws — has angered conservatives and, with just weeks before state elections, left some LGBTQ Malaysians concerned about a governmet backlash against them.
Headlining the Good Vibes Festival, the British pop-rock singer delivered a profanity-laden speech, with a wine bottle (or what at least appeared to be one) in hand.
“Unfortunately, you don’t get a set of loads of uplifting songs because I’m fucking furious,” he said. “And that’s not fair on you, because you’re not representative of your government — because you’re young people, and I’m sure a lot of you are gay and progressive and cool.”
While the speech was met with some cheers, some LGBTQ community members say it may worsen the oppression they face and undo the progress they’ve made.
“He gets to fly out of the country and not face the consequences,” drag performer Carmen Rose told the Guardian, “while our people have to face the brunt of what just happened.”
“Any foreign artist who comes here and who wants to advocate for us, they need to understand how to go about it,” she added. “What works in the West may not work here. They may actually do more harm than good.”
After making the controversial speech, Healy kissed bass player Ross MacDonald as they played the song “I Like America & America Likes Me” — in stark visual and sonic contrast with the criminalization of same-sex relations and gender-nonconformity under both Malaysia’s modern-day criminal code and its colonial-era penal code, the latter of which punishes oral and anal sex with up to 20 years in prison.
The move also harkened back to an incident in which Healy reportedly kissed a male fan during a concert in the United Arab Emirates, which also outlaws same-sex acts, in 2019.
About a half-hour after the kiss, Healy announced the band was now banned, and they walked off stage. The next day, festival organizers announced the entire event had been canceled.
“There will be no compromise with any party that challenges, belittles or violates Malaysian laws,” Fahmi Fadzil, the country’s communications czar, said in a statement posted to Facebook.
The trauma of a police raid last year is very much in the forefront of many LGBTQ people’s minds as they ponder a potential backlash to Healy’s stunt. Twenty people were arrested at a queer Halloween party in Kuala Lumpur, which activists see as a poignant example of rising anti-LGBTQ sentiment.
“For people who live in Kuala Lumpur, the raid was a very scary night, and I think that since then a lot of us do live in fear,” Mikhail Hanafi, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, told the Guardian, adding that foreign performers like Healy “need to be mindful of how they speak.”
“They need to speak to the community beforehand,” he said.
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