Gospels signer Kim Burrell felt the full consequence of homophobia this week when her radio program was cancelled following an anti-gay rant.
Texas Southern University announced Wednesday evening that Burrell’s radio show “Bridging The Gap” would no longer broadcast on the KTSU airwaves, the station that carried the program. The show first began airing through KTSU seven months ago.
“The Kim Burrell show is no longer airing as part of KTSU Radio programming,” a representative of KTSU confirmed to The Huffington Post.
Burrell, who appeared on tracks with Pharrell, Frank Ocean and others, made waves on New Year’s Eve when video surfaced of the singer delivering a sermon that spewed homophobic rhetoric and called gays and lesbians “perverted.”
“That perverted homosexual spirit, and the spirit of delusion and confusion, it has deceived many men and women. You as a man, you open your mouth and take a man’s penis in your face ― you are perverted,” Burrell can be heard in the above video saying. “You are a woman and will shake your face in another woman’s breast, you are perverted.”
Burrell was initially scheduled to perform with Pharrell on the Ellen DeGeneres show on Thursday, but the talk show host and gay icon cancelled Burrell’s performance following the revelation of her homophobia.
Pharrell still appeared on DeGeneres’ show Thursday, however, and used the opportunity to deliver a powerful message about hate speech.
“Whenever you hear some sort of hate speech and you feel like it doesn’t pertain to you because you may not have anything to do with that, all you got to do is put the word black in that sentence, or put gay in that sentence, or put transgender in that sentence, or put white in that sentence, and all of the sudden it starts to make sense to you,” Pharrell said. “I’m telling you, the world is a beautiful place but it does not work without empathy and inclusion.”
