ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (1010 WINS) -- Fans seeing Carlos Santana live in concert didn't like the way the show went down, once he began talking about trans people.
A resurfaced video from a month ago shows the legendary, Grammy-winning rock guitarist pausing one of his own songs to give a 15-minute screed filled with anti-trans comments.
"When God made you and me, before we came out of the womb, you know who you are and what you are," Santana says in the clip. "Later on, when you grow out of it, you see things, and you start believing that you could be something that sounds good, but you know it ain’t right. Because a woman is a woman and a man is a man. That’s it. Whatever you wanna do in the closet, that’s your business. I’m OK with that.”
Santana then clasped his hands in "solidarity" with Dave Chappelle, the comedian whose own recent shows have aligned him with "team TERF" - referring to "trans-exclusionary radical feminists."
For many of the Atlantic City concertgoers, though, Santana's diatribe came completely out of left field. Fans at the show took to social media to express their discomfort, not just with Carlos Santana himself, but at being surrounded by people who applauded his speech.
After the clip came to light, Santana sent a formal apology to Billboard. He said he intended to “honor and respect all person’s ideals and beliefs whether they are LGBTQ or not," promising to “pursue this goal to be happy and have fun, and for everyone to believe what they want and follow in your hearts without fear."
Carlos Santana is far from the first classic rocker to throw his hat in the ring of transphobic comments. In these past weeks, Alice Cooper called gender transition a "fad" while perpetuating false claims about gender-affirming care. Meanwhile, Twisted Sister's Dee Snider's support of similar beliefs got the band's song "We're Not Gonna Take It" pulled from a San Francisco pride parade last June.
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