A Quick Q & A With Punk Legend Henry Rollins

By Mike Saucier

Punk legend and outspoken human rights activist Henry Rollins will hit the stage at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts this week.

The Renaissance man, who first found fame as the lead singer of Black Flag and the Rollins Band in the 1980s and ’90s, will discuss social justice and equality on Thursday, March 30 at 6 p.m. The event is being presented by Out @ SMoCA.

Rollins has campaigned for several causes through the years, including LGBT rights and World Hunger Relief.

Signed copies of his book will be raffled to benefit the Phoenix Pride Scholarship Fund.

Frontdoors Media caught up with him ahead of his appearance in Scottsdale and asked him a couple of questions.

FD: What was the genesis in deciding to devote so much of your time and energy to LGBT rights?

HR: It was probably many things, ultimately turning into one thing. I grew up in Washington D.C., which has a large and visible gay population. My mother had gay friends. I had gay bosses. I went to an all-boys school. There were gay students, gay teachers. The D.C. music scene had a lot of gay people. None of this was ever a thing with me. At a film theater I worked at all through high school, I had a gay boss. On Saturday nights his friends would all hang out in the lobby. They would tell me stories of the club scene and all the goings on and all the jobs they lost, the beatings, rejection by parents, siblings, people at school and it made me see that they were like punk rockers who at the time were getting chased and bullied.

It wasn’t pity I felt, that doesn’t help, it was a knowledge that this kind of discrimination cannot stand. Homophobic people often have no idea how many gay people are in their lives. If they weren’t homophobic, they would know. I think being prejudiced against someone for being LGBT is like being prejudiced against left-handed people. It makes no sense to me. As a boiled-down, one-size-fits-all answer to anyone’s issue with LGBT people living their lives in the United States, everything from marriage equality to not being discriminated against at retail, etc., is all dealt with by the First, Fourth and Fourteenth amendments of the Constitution.

This is the century to get this behind us and that’s why I weigh in with the velocity and visibility. As a straight, white American male, I have little understanding of being discriminated against, so I reckon my job is to be an asset to those, who by no fault of their own, are getting unfair treatment.

FD: World Hunger Relief is listed as a favorite cause of yours – how did this organization become so close to your heart?

HR: Food and water insecurity became a big issue with me after I started seeing it in my travels on the African continent, the Middle East and other regions.

I am in these parts of the world not as often as I would like but often enough to know a few things. The idea of not knowing where your next meal is coming from is not a contemporary Western idea. We often have to watch our weight because of too much food. We use the shower for “me time,” etc. In some parts of the world, there are no words in the language for retirement, vacation or insurance.

People plan a few minutes ahead, that’s about the full extent of their life certainty. I reckon, if at all possible, you should be a citizen of the world and not just the country you come from. So, food and water insecurity, climate change, war, all these things become concerns.

You can take as much or as little of this on as you want. I have a lot going on and a lot I want to get done, so I can’t be full time on this stuff but being aware and activated to a certain degree is a good thing.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

About Mike Saucier

Mike Saucier is the Editor of Frontdoors Media. He can be reached at editor@frontdoorsmedia.com.

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