British rock band 1975 lead singer Matt Healy (seen in Portugal in July 2016) has been sued in a British court by event organizers in Malaysia stemming from last year’s same-sex kiss onstage with fellow band member Ross MacDonald. File Photo by Jose Sena Goulao/EPA-EFE
Aug. 1 (UPI) — British rock band The 1975 has been sued by event organizers in Malaysia stemming from the band’s show last year in which two band members shared a same-sex kiss in violation of the country’s strict laws on morality.
A lawsuit filed July 23 in a British court by lawyers representing Future Sound Asia is seeking about $2.4 million in damages, contending the band breached its own contract that resulted in a financial loss for FSA, the organizer of the Malaysia-based Good Vibes Festival.
Matthew Healy, Adam Hann, Ross MacDonald and George Daniel formed The 1975 in 2002 after meeting in high school.
The group headlined the first day of the event in July last year when MacDonald and Healy shared a kiss onstage during their performance in Kuala Lumpur in protest of Malaysia’s strict anti-LGBTQ laws, which still make same-sex relationships illegal.
In 2018, a sharia court in Malaysia found two women — then ages 22 and 32 — guilty of attempting to have sex and caned them, a form of torture, as punishment inside a courtroom witnessed by more than 100 people. They also were fined 3,300 ringgit, or about $800 USD.
Last year, Healy went onstage just prior to say he made a “mistake” for letting the band get booked for the event.
“I do not see the [expletive] point of inviting The 1975 to a country and then telling us who we can have sex with,” Healy said just before he and Macdonald kissed.
The incident then promoted the country’s minister of communications to call out the band on social media, saying the government’s position “is very clear.”
“There is no compromise against any party that challenges, disparages and violates Malaysian laws,” Malaysian Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil posted on X at the time.
The Malaysian government then cancelled the remainder of the 2023 festival the day after.
Future Sound Asia claimed band members had planned to violate the rules ahead of time, which included restrictions such as kissing, swearing, removing clothes, drinking or smoking onstage and talking about politics or religion.
The suit further alleges the band smuggled in wine to give Healy “easy access” to it, and that the group had been bound to the same contractual restrictions as its last performance at the festival in 2016, which stated that “flouting them will result in the event permit being revoked,” according to the lawsuit.
But in October, Healy defended the band while on stage in Dallas, Texas, saying that he and the other members did not enter Malaysia “unannounced,” but instead “were invited to headline a festival by a government who had full knowledge of the band with its well-publicized political views and its routine stage show.” He said the kiss he shared with Ross “was not a stunt simply meant to provoke the government,” he continued, but was “an ongoing part of the 1975 stage show, which had been performed many times prior.”
“To eliminate any routine part of the show in an effort to appease the Malaysian authorities’ bigoted views of LGBTQ people would be a passive endorsement of those politics,” Healy said.
