Grant responded to his kind words, saying, “I’m just sitting here looking at you and whatever has made you who you are, you know you’re really beautiful.”
Kelly’s Follow-Up on Twitter
Kelly took to his Twitter page to share even deeper how much Grant’s album “Heart in Motion” meant to him. “I now believe I was born that way, but my big breakthrough came when a counselor I had as a young adult told me it didn’t matter how I got there, there was no ‘glory spout’ I could stand under that would turn me straight,” he said. That was when he when he decided to leave the church, sharing, “I left the church that didn’t accept gay people and went out into the world to be gay. To accept myself. That led me on to a delayed adolescence I can tell you about later.”
“To hear Amy say on this episode that I am welcome at God’s table as a gay man is so affirming,” he said, thanking Grant for changing his life. Referring to God as a female, Kelly closed his Twitter thread saying, “God has worked many of Her greatest wonders in my life through you. (I call God “She” to fight the patriarchy.)”
Read Kelly’s full Twitter thread below:
“Having Amy Grant on PROUD Radio on @AppleMusic Country today to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Heart in Motion makes sense on a musical level because this is the album that led me to dive head first into top 40/pop radio in 1991. It was a year before I saw Garth Brooks in 1992 and added an obsession with country music. Heart in Motion was my gateway to understanding how music was made and marketed and the single remixes on cassingle were my intro to dance music. But the connection with my queerness and Heart in Motion goes much deeper. When I was three years old, I was sexually molested by a teen boy. I remembered it happening, but I had trouble understanding what it was until I heard Amy’s song ‘Ask Me’ on Heart in Motion. That song made me put together what happened to me and tell my parents. I am fortunate we had the resources for me to go to a children’s counselor for about two years to start dealing with the abuse. As I got older, I started coming to terms with being gay. I tried to pray the gay away in therapy groups and at the altar on Sundays. A big part of this coming to terms was trying to untangle whether I was gay because of the sexual abuse or because I was born that way. I believe I had a leg up to wrestle with my sexuality at that point in my early 20s because the therapy I had as a kid let me know the abuse was not my fault. That wouldn’t have happened without ‘Ask Me’ by Amy Grant. I now believe I was born that way, but my big breakthrough came when a counselor I had as a young adult told me it didn’t matter how I got there, there was no ‘glory spout’ I could stand under that would turn me straight. So, I left the church that didn’t accept gay people and went out into the world to be gay. To accept myself. That led me on to a delayed adolescence I can tell you about later. But, to hear Amy say on this episode that I am welcome at God’s table as a gay man is so affirming. Thank you, Amy Grant. You’ve changed my life in so many ways. God has worked many of Her greatest wonders in my life through you. (I call God ‘She’ to fight the patriarchy.)”
