Coachella Owner Philip Anschutz Funds Anti-LGBTQ Organizations The Inter-web Reacts

With headliners like Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar on this year’s line-up, the 2017 Coachella Music Festival has been celebrated as one of the most-anticipated events in recent memory. But newly circulated information about the event’s owner has some fans saddend wary of making the trip to Indio, California.

Philip Anschutz, the owner of Coachella’s parent company AEG, has reportedly funneled thousands of dollars in the form of donations into several anti-LGBTQ organizations and is an active climate-change denier, according to a new report from UPROXX.

Anschutz has monetarily supported the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council and the National Christian Foundation — all three of which vehemently lobby against LGBTQ rights.

Ian Silverii, the executive director of ProgressNow Colorado, released a statement about Anschutz’s donations in 2016, saying via UPROXX, “Phil Anschutz’s extensive influence in Colorado politics has been known for years, but the degree of his support for anti-LGBTQ groups that fund extremist hate groups like Gordon Kligenschmitt’s ‘Pray in Jesus Name’ is shocking.

“At a time in American history when discrimination and violence against LGBTQ citizens is on the rise, support for pro-discrimination groups puts Anschutz on the wrong side of Colorado, and on the wrong side of history,” he continued.

Anschutz also reportedly meets bi-annually with infamous climate-change deniers, the Koch brothers, in an attempt to push his own political agenda onto his media outlets like his conservative publication The Washington Examiner.

From Greenpeace:

Phil Anschutz, a fellow financier of climate science denial groups, is one of many elites who attends the Kochs’ twice-annual strategy meetings, where millions of dollars are raised to influence politics through groups like the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, the Franklin Center, and the other members of the State Policy Network.

Soon after the post many took to social media on the Inter-web to voice their disapointment.