Since the passing of The Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act (HB2) law, widely known as the “bathroom bill,” many artists and performers have canceled appearances in North Carolina in protest of this anti-LGBTQIA act.
Selena Gomez, however, will not be cancelling her Revival Tour concert scheduled for June 7 at Charlotte, North Carolina’s Time Warner Cable Arena. Instead, she announced in a statement to Billboard that she will donate proceeds from her concert to help overturn the discriminatory law.
Gomez began her statement by saying, “I am very fortunate to have grown up in a home where I learned from an early age that everyone should be treated equally.”
She admits she “went back and forth on whether I should cancel my concert in North Carolina,” but she ultimately decided it was best for her “to move forward with my show and donate a portion of the proceeds to Equality North Carolina and their effort to defeat this act of discrimination.”
This is in addition to the proceeds from each ticket that go towards the Alliance for Lupus Research, a national health organization working towards finding treatments for and preventing lupus. (In 2013, Gomez was diagnosed with lupus and underwent chemotherapy.)
Gomez went further to reassure fans that the venue she will be performing at will have gender neutral bathrooms, as she wants “everyone coming to my show to be welcomed.”
“I feel like my generation is the most progressive one yet,” she concluded, “and believe there will be a day soon when laws like HB2 won’t even be a consideration.”