Gay Pop Star Tooji Fired From TV Presenting Job For Being A Bad "Role Model For Children"
The Iranian-born Norwegian pop star who came out Monday by releasing a music video featuring himself having sex with a priest has been fired from his job, The Local reports.
"My new video Father is Out, and so am I!" 28-year-old Touraj Keshtkar (stage name Tooji) wrote on Twitter.
The black and white video, shot inside a Christian church, shows him meeting a priest at the altar before undressing and having sex with him in front of a congregation. Tooji explained in a separate video that he chose the salacious imagery in rebellion, as he felt obligations to the church kept him from coming out for so long.
Once the video was released Monday, it was immediately condemned by Ole Christian Kvarme, the Bishop of Oslo, who called the imagery "totally unacceptable" and "a gross misuse of the church."
"No matter what the content of the video might be, it is not acceptable to perform these types of scenes in front of the altar. It is a misuse of the holy room of the church," he said, adding that a video featuring a male/female couple would have been just as unacceptable.
"The song and the video is about someone who is running from himself, denying himself, and yes, if God is in everyone and everything, denying God," Tooji explained. "With this project I wanted to show that love between two people of the same sex has for too long has been tainted by religion."
"It's time we put human rights before religion," he said, revealing for the first time that he was banned from his home country Iran after advocating for LGBT rights during the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan.
According to The Local, the controversy has even caused Tooji to lose his job as the host of Melodi Grand Prix Junior, a Eurovision spinoff for teenagers that airs in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. "The reason I was fired was that the music video was not consistent with being a role model for children," he said.
You can check out the video again below:
