Rob Halford on LGBT rights

"I always thought things would be better". This is what Rob Halford, front man for legendary British speed metal band Judas Priest had to say about the current state of affairs in the LGBT communities.

He always thought things would improve over time, like the old adage "Time heals all wounds". Apparently some wounds still refuse to heal. He thought things about gay rights would improve, but sadly no. He said he is happy with the warmth and kindness he has received from the hard rock community after coming out of the closet in 1998. He was actually worried at first about coming out as gay, thinking he would suffer from some sort of fallout effect

"I just get so frustrated and angry that here we are in 2017. Because of that society I grew up in, and to a still great extent today, we have this tremendous push back in equality. I always kind of felt, as I was going through my teen years, my twenties and my thirties, things would be better – but they’re not. There’s still a long way to go in America and in my home country. And in some parts of the world, people like me get thrown off buildings. People like me get hung, just because of who we are." He told Blabbermouth.

Rob compared struggles of LGBT people to the types of struggles faced by "people of color" and "people having tremendous difficulties with accepting religions". He added "It’s a crazy world. You’d think that by now we’d have just figured things out – live and let live, love each other and just accept each other for who we are. Life is short."

He recalled the moment he came out as gay during an MTV interview. "The thing about gay people is that, until we come out of the closet, we’re always protecting other people – ‘I can’t do this, because it’s gonna hurt so-and-so.’ We’re trying to live the lives of other people, and that’s the worst thing you can do. You’ve gotta learn to love yourself, then you can go out in the world and try and figure everything else out. So I said that thing, and I went back to the hotel and I thought, ‘What have I done? There’s going to be a fallout."

After coming out, he experienced not a fallout, but an outpouring of respect and kindness. His bandmates in Judas Priest had no issue with him being gay. Even bassist Ian Hill was quoted as saying "we always knew he was gay but we treated him like a normal human being because that's the way gay people should be treated."

He mentioned "I’d never seen such an outpouring of love in all my life from everybody in the metal community. Rob, we don’t care. We want you to be who you are.’ That was a tremendously uplifting moment for me. This just goes to show you that we in the metal community – probably because of the push back we felt because of the music we love – we are the most tolerant, the most open-minded, the most loving, the most accepting of all the kinds of music in rock’n’roll. So it was a great moment."