Adele is a proud LGBTQIA+ ally and is not here for the haters.
During the singer’s Saturday, June 1 concert in Las Vegas, she addressed the crowd in between songs when she was interrupted by a heckler in the crowd yelling, “Pride sucks!”
Adele, 36, immediately silenced the concertgoer.
“What was that? Did you just say, ‘Pride sucks?’” Adele said on Saturday, per social media footage. “Did you come to my f–king show and just say that Pride sucks? Are you f–king stupid? Don’t be so f–king ridiculous.”
She continued, “If you got nothing nice to say, shut up, all right?”
Saturday was the first day of Pride Month, an annual celebration for members of the queer community. While the month of June often honors Pride with a series of parties and parades, it is based on something deeper.
“Pride is a protest,” Billy Porter, who is openly queer, exclusively told Us Weekly last month. “It’s time for the elders to remind the kids that this is [a] protest. It’s not just a party. Trust me, I believe in the party. You have to. And [also] contacting your local representatives [and] getting involved in local government. Vote bitches.”
The first Pride celebration was launched in honor of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, a series of gay liberation protests, in New York City.
Adele, for her part, has long been an ally of the community.
“I get a lot of mail from people who tell me that I make them really happy to be themselves, and really comfortable with who they are, which I love,” she told Out magazine in 2015, revealing that she once got a letter from a teen fan about using her music to come out to friends. “He fancied someone at school, but he wasn’t out. And he listened to ‘Someone Like You’ and came out to his best friend and then to the boy he fancied, and it turned out that he was gay as well, and now they’re together — he’s like 15. I had to leave so I didn’t burst into tears.”
One year later, Adele honored the victims of the fatal shooting at Pulse, a gay dance club in Miami, during one of her concerts in Belgium.
“I’d like to start tonight by dedicating this entire show to everybody in Orlando and Pulse nightclub,” she tearfully said during her June 2016 concert. “The LGBTQA community, they’re like my soulmates since I was really young, so I’m really moved by it.”
