LGBTQ+ Artists Represent at Christian Music’s Dove Awards

Critics Condemn Derek Webb and Flamy Grant’s Drag Visibility

Did you hear that two men in dresses attended Contemporary Christian Music’s (CCM) 54th annual Dove Awards this month? Don’t worry: they weren’t nominated for anything. They bought tickets and sat in the public sections.

Conservative Christians are horrified at the audacity.

“I’m literally speechless,” claims Skillet frontman John Cooper (who didn’t attend the awards show this year), as reported by Jesse T. Jackson of ChurchLeaders and ChristianNewsNow.

Jackson goes on to directly quote 539 words, along with a summary of more of Cooper’s long-winded rant. The article on ChurchLeaders is un-ironically titled, “‘I’m Literally Speechless’ — Skillet’s John Cooper Addresses Drag Queen at the Dove Awards.”

Cooper certainly has a lot to say for someone who is speechless.

Cooper isn’t the only conservative Christian who has a beef with Derek Webb and friends Flamy Grant and Semler, who attended the Dove Awards this year “to express our queer joy,” as Grant told Cynthia Vacca Davis for Baptist News Global.

Grace Semler Baldridge, who performs as Semler, was the first openly queer Christian music artist to have an album hit #1 on Christian music charts. Matthew Blake Lovegood, who performs as Flamy Grant, is the first drag queen to hit #1 on Christian music charts.

Despite their groundbreaking and undeniably popular artistry, neither was nominated for an award, so they bought tickets and attended as audience members. Derek Webb, lead singer for Christian band Caedmon’s Call, joined them, rocking a polka dot dress in order to “surrender [his] privilege at the door.”

Christian Post reporter Ian M. Giatti was so perturbed at this display of queerness that he wrote two articles last week about it. And this week, Rachel M. Emmanuel wrote for The Western Journal about the “stunt”, calling it a “mockery” and pointing out that they “weren’t nominated or even invited.”

Of course they weren’t nominated — that’s why they bought tickets.

There may be a world someday where a Christian music awards show would recognize a queer artist, but this is not that world. At least, not yet.

However, people like Cooper, Giatti, and Emmanuel do not want these artists to even attend the show as ticket holders. At least, not visibly. I suppose they may not have minded if Semler, Grant, and Webb had dressed down to hide their light under a bushel and/or had not posted photos online celebrating their fabulous outfits.

So, two men in dresses and a nonbinary person in black slacks and a brown leather jacket sat in the “nosebleed section” at the awards show, and conservative Christian commentators lost their minds. The sky is falling!

If all three had dressed like Semler, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. We AFAB (assigned female at birth) people have a lot more wiggle room before conservatives consider that we’re “in drag.” In my 20s, I wore slacks and neckties to my conservative evangelical church and no one batted an eye.

But, a man puts on a dress, and suddenly it’s a sign of the Apocalypse.

Two men put on dresses and attend a Christian function? It’s an invasion.

Webb has a different perspective. Cynthia Vacca Davis reports of the night:

Webb’s thoughts drifted to people sitting much closer to the stage: closeted nominees and presenters he considers friends. “I know precisely who those people are — my friends and colleagues who I knew were there.” Webb hopes they looked up and saw the gathering as a source of “hope and strength.”

While several people revealed that the group’s visibility encouraged them, I believe that countless others were given hope but could not or would not say.

I used to listen to CCM, but I drifted away when it got boring. People like Semler and Grant have drawn me back to Christian music. Of course, they are not affiliated with CCM, which has gone stale.

Trey Pearson, Vicky Beeching, Tim Be Told, Marsha Stevens-Pino, Jennifer Knapp, Julien Baker, Semler, Flamy Grant…

There have always been queer artists in Christian music, but they have not been visible until recently. Now, that visibility is simultaneously terrifying for the reactionaries and encouraging for queer Christians like me.

Representation is powerful. Quiet visibility in the midst of a hostile environment is “mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.”

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. — 1 Corinthians 13:13

Love wins.

Esther learned to read when she was four years old, and began writing shortly thereafter. She is a Canadian queer Christian poet, crafting with words to create art and music.

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