Village People — the disco band whose members were deliberately stylized as macho gay characters — will play events celebrating the inauguration of soon-to-be President Donald Trump, arguably the most anti-LGBTQ+ president of all time.
“We know this won’t make some of you happy to hear,” wrote the band’s lead singer Victor Willis (who dresses as the band’s policeman character) in a recent Facebook post, “however we believe that music is to be performed without regard to politics. Our song ‘Y.M.C.A.’ is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our preferred candidate lost.”
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Willis wrote that the band will perform at “various events” during Trump’s second inauguration, including at least one event with Trump in attendance. The band is scheduled to perform at an inaugural eve ball hosted by the anti-LGBTQ+ conservative group Turning Point USA, according to the event’s website. The event’s high-profile attendees will include anti-LGBTQ+ figures like Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, Donald Trump Jr. and transphobic Trump administration nominee Tulsi Gabbard.
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Turning Point USA’s founder Charlie Kirk has promoted Christian nationalism, Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 elections, and demonized transgender people, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The organization has a “professor watchlist” of educators who allegedly push “dangerous” “anti-American” “immoral,” and “radical” “”sexual/gender ideology” onto students. Kirk himself has advocated the legal persecution of “the alphabet mafia, groomers, [and] chemical castration of children, now” — all dog-whistles for LGBTQ+ community members and their allies.
Trump repeatedly played “Y.M.C.A.” during his re-election campaign events and would occasionally pump his fists in the air to its beat. Willis has argued that the song itself isn’t gay and is merely dedicated to his youth at the eponymous fitness community centers. However, David Hodo, who performed as the band’s construction worker, said the song was “absolutely” written to celebrate gay men at the YMCA, adding “and gay people love it.”
Willis raised eyebrows last December when he announced that, starting in January, he will sue “each and every news organization that falsely refers to Y.M.C.A., either in their headlines or alluded to in the base of the story, that Y.M.C.A. is somehow a gay anthem.”
In his announcement, Willis basically said that the song’s renewed popularity is making Willis a lot of money. His position appeared to contradict his 2020 request that Trump no longer use any Village People music.
Willis, who is heterosexual, said he originally asked Trump to stop using the song because the number of people complaining to him about it “had become a nuisance,” though his original request suggested discontent with Trump’s threats on the American people.
However, Willis said he changed his mind because Trump was “having a lot of fun” with the song and he “didn’t have the heart” to stop him from using it.
Gay cultural critic Michael Musto believes that the song has been “straight-washed.”
“All these years later, the gay subtext is gone, and it’s a rah-rah crowd-pleaser for the baseball stadium crowd,” Musto said, noting the song’s popularity at sporting events. “It happens. A rallying song for the oppressed turns into a middle-of-the-road spirit-lifter, mainly because the straights like to steal things from the gays, take away all the scary edge, and make it their own.”
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