Kiss’ Paul Stanley Slammed Over Twitter Rant On Gender-Affirming Care
Kiss’ frontman Paul Stanley dropped his “thoughts” on gender-affirming care for children in a lengthy social media post on Sunday where he criticized it for being “a sad and dangerous fad.”
The singer and guitarist, in a message shared to Twitter and Instagram, took aim at parents for “normalizing and even encouraging participation in a lifestyle” that he claimed is confusing children about their identities.
“With many children who have no real sense of sexuality or sexual experiences caught up in the ‘fun’ of using pronouns and saying what they identify as, some adults mistakenly confuse teaching acceptance with normalizing and encouraging a situation that has been a struggle for those truly affected and have turned it into a sad and dangerous fad,” Stanley wrote.
You can read his full comment below.
Several Twitter users slammed Stanley over his rant including Keith Olbermann, who scolded the rock star for referring to gender-affirming care for children as a “game.”
“It’s not a ‘game,’ you asshole. What you do is a GAME. What they face – internally and now externally due to stupid panicky fascists like you, externally – is an excruciating ordeal,” Olbermann wrote.
Members of the music world also weighed in on Stanley’s take such as The Offspring guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, who implied Kiss’ famous on-stage looks are “just gimmickry.”
“This is a very disappointing take, especially from someone who wore high-heels, makeup, & teased up hair his whole career,” Wasserman wrote.
“As a young kid your band helped teach me that I could be whatever I wanted to be. I guess it was just gimmickry after all. #thatsashame.”
NBC News senior reporter Ben Collins also suggested that Stanley’s take comes in contrast with the band’s aesthetic choices.
You can read Collins’ thoughts, and others, in the tweets below.