Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford has spoken out about homophobia in the US in a new appearance on Jake Shears’ Queer The Music podcast, which you can watch below.
- READ MORE: Judas Priest legend Rob Halford: “Coming out happened in the right way – it wasn’t premeditated”
Scissor Sisters singer Shears asked Halford, who came out as gay on MTV in 1998, if he thought attitudes towards sexuality had changed in the years since. The 74-year-old, currently on the road with Priest in North America on their co-headlining tour with Alice Cooper, gave a mixed response.
“Oh, yeah, although depending on where you’re at,” said Halford, who also shared that he married his longtime partner Thomas last year. “America is still incredibly homophobic. I’ve lived here for a long time and I’ve seen a lot happen since the ’80s.”
“It really gets me angry and upset. But when I go on stage and perform with Priest, some guys will say, ‘I love Judas Priest, but I’m not gay,’” he added, laughing. “You know that thing – ‘I’m a huge fan of Priest, but I’m not a gay guy’ – that still lives with me now to some extent. It might be a fraction.”
He did point out that fans at shows are generally very accepting, and that his own sexuality has nothing to do with the band’s concerts. “When I walk out on stage, when Priest is doing headline tours and I know that everybody has come there to see this band and hear the songs that we’ve made and watch us perform, surely they’re there with complete acceptance in their heart,” he said.
“Everybody in that room is, like, ‘Well, we don’t care’ – as they shouldn’t. They shouldn’t care. This labelling, it shouldn’t be a part of anything. They shouldn’t care. It’s about what you’re doing. It’s about your art and your craft and your work. That’s all that matters.”
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Halford also discussed his public coming out on MTV, which occurred via an off-the-cuff, unplanned remark. “They’re talking about [former supergroup 2wo]. And I go, ‘Well, speaking as a gay man, this is,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” he said. “And then I heard somebody’s clipboard drop on the floor, because I had literally formally announced to the world that I’m a gay man. So I did that show. I went back to the hotel, sat in the room, going, ‘What have I done? What have I done?’ And I was, like, ‘I don’t care.’”
He described the feeling of coming out as being “very natural” due to it not being premeditated. “It was just a pure stream of consciousness, just talking away. And so it just came into the conversation, and that was that,” he explained.
Halford also looked back on the moment with NME in 2024. “Everybody in the band knew I was gay, everybody at the label knew I was gay and management knew I was gay,” he said. “And wouldn’t you believe it? All the fans were like, ‘Well, we always thought you were gay anyway.’”
He went on to speak about the impact of his coming out due to his platform and level of fame as the singer of a long-running and successful band, but also about homophobia in metal. “Being a gay man and coming out into a metal world, at the time, that was really difficult because of the homophobia and the pushback,” he said. “And I still get it now.”
And in an interview with the Edmonton Journal in 2019, he spoke about not being able to go back to places where he’d be “stoned to death” due to his sexuality. When asked if he was worried about losing fans after coming out, he replied: “Oh yeah, absolutely. I was surrounded by homophobia, which still exists today. There are places I can’t go back to because I’ll be stoned to death.
“As far as that whole business, I discovered when I did come out that I was in this trap gay people find themselves living in that you’re living your life for everyone else, but not yourself. During the ’70s and ’80s it was incredibly difficult.”
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