Folks, Reidsville is no hotbed of LGBT equality, but this small town ( less than 15K) had heard enough of Matt Boswell and the Hillbilly Blues Band, who were hired to entertain people at the town’s fall festival. The Hillbillies were sorely mistaken about level of Reidsville’s homophobic camaraderie during a rendition of Merle Haggard’s “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good?” (QNotes):

Boswell sang, “Well you’ll never take my guns, and I’ll pray anywhere that I please./My daddy always told me, if you were able, and didn’t work then you don’t eat./All you Wall Street bankers, as far as I’m concerned, you can all go to Hell./And you can’t get married, you stupid gays and queers, so why don’t you go somewhere else?”

A viewer later emailed the station asking that anti-gay lyrics be stripped from future broadcasts. Reidsville City Manager Kelly Almond told Q-Notes the language used by Boswell was “tasteless.”

“It was absolutely unacceptable and certainly unacceptable at a city-owned venue and city-sponsored event,” he said.

Almond also said the employees in charge of booking public events have been “instructed not to book [Boswell] again,” with similar thoughts echoed in an email to WGSR 47: “I can assure everyone involved that, if this language was used, this person, or anyone representing him, will not play another city event. Market Square, and indeed all city venues, are places meant to bring people together, not divide them. We certainly support tasteful, patriotic acts. We also have to respect everyone’s Free Speech rights. However, we don’t have to pay for it or include it in a city sponsored event, and we will not.”

You see, Boswell, just because Reidsville hasn’t progressed enough to include sexual orientation or gender-identity in its non-discrimination policy for city employees yet doesn’t mean you have a venue to foment hate. You’re now banned from performing in that small NC town.