Arts & Entertainment
Gays prominent at Amy Grant’s Nashville weekend
Gathering reminds how much is missing of singer’s touring history

Weekend before last, a friend and I made a road trip to Nashville to spend a weekend with Amy Grant and 550 of her nearest and dearest. It was a great weekend — $50,000 was raised for various charities Grant supports, the music performed (almost all requests) was a long-time fan’s dream come true and the Gospel Music Hall of Famer and six-time Grammy winner was as accessible and approachable as was realistically possible considering those attending were among the all-time die hards, a few of whom had vulture-like tendencies everytime Grant appeared.
That gays — and at least one lesbian couple and one trans woman — were among the group was hardly surprising. We’ve been among the most vocal in her fan circles for years. Most non-church folks remember Grant only for a few early ’90s hits (“Baby Baby,” “Every Heartbeat”). Though her catalog has aged well, she’s not deemed terribly high on the hip quotient. Even one of the charity recipients said, “Amy Grant — isn’t she Vince Gill’s wife?”
But for a generation of gay men who grew up in Baptist and Evangelical churches in the ’80s, Grant was so much more than that and, no exaggeration, a lifeline. Contemporary Christian Music had its own parallel universe divas — Sandi Patty, Twila Paris, Margaret Becker, et. al. — and Grant, who in many ways had and maintains a very non-diva-esque persona, was queen of the lot. But that’s just one of the ironies of Grant’s career — she also stumbled into the music biz without really trying, has always been upfront about her modest pipes (she’s really a better songwriter than singer) and, despite a bounty of RIAA Platinum albums, never fully fit in in either the gospel or pop establishments.
Those of us in fan circles have discussed ad nauseum Grant’s public handling of her gay fans (or lack thereof). She’s warm, friendly, gamely poses for photos with male couples, etc., but is careful never to state her personal feelings one way or the other. One understands to a degree — she’s in a no-win situation. As was obvious from the attendees last weekend, most of Grant’s fans are Gen. X and post-Boomer soccer moms from the Bible belt. We all seem to mix pretty well. I hope they feel the same. But Grant would alienate a large part of her fan base if she were to come out one way or the other on her feelings of the Bible and homosexuality. There’s a clamoring among gay fans, of course, for her to be more unequivocal. Nobody’s expecting Lady Gaga-caliber activism, but heck, even the late Tammy Faye Bakker Messner was more openly gay accepting than Grant. Perhaps, though, having lost everything already, Tammy Faye had nothing left to lose (Tammy Faye even joined us at Capital Pride about 10 years ago …. Ahhhh, Tammy Faye, how I miss thee).
Grant does occasionally take risks — it will undoubtedly seem like a non-issue to many, but monogrammed bottles of Jack Daniels with Amy Grant nameplates were sold for $100 a pop at her farm, which she opened to guests on June 23. It all went to charity but the irony was delicious — I’m old enough to recall the outraged reactions in the ’80s when Grant said in an early interview that she occasionally imbibed. Folks at my parents’ church were apoplectic.
It’s never been a big deal to me, either the booze or the gay stuff. Some fans, so eager to glean the slightest glimmer of acceptance (are we really that desperate for validation?), latched on to an off-the-cuff remark she made during the weekend when a guest southern gospel singer, telling a story about a drag queen who’d parodied his wife, said his group had a large gay following (Grant acknowledged she did as well).
The draws for me have always been Grant’s music and personality. There’s a freshness, a buoyancy, to her music that, though it sounds stylistically dated, never really goes away. It goes back to the first album — lyrics and energetic Brown Bannister production around lines like, “The sun woke me up real early it’s a beautiful morn/so I’m goin’ down to the river to be reborn” still resonate 35 years after they were put down on wax. My parents, both products of stodgy, old school mainline and Roman Catholic versions of Christianity, had early-’70s born again experiences and for them and their fellow Boomers, there was a parallel Jesus music/born again fever sweeping the country the same time Stonewall and the modern gay rights movement was kicking off. This is no coincidence — hippie ideals weren’t sustainable, of course, but what they did bring us was a shucking off of the ’50s mindset on all kinds of issues. In terms of gay stuff, faith, and a whole lot more, this was not your parents’ (my grandparents’) America. Grant got in on sort of the tail end of that but shot off into the stratosphere in the early ’80s. By then, things had calmed down and she became the voice of a churchgoing, Bible Belt generation with songs like “El Shaddai,” “Sing Your Praise to the Lord” and “Thy Word.”
Bored eventually with straight-up gospel, she gradually started flirting with pop music and following a hit No. 1 duet with Peter Cetera in ’87 (“Next Time I Fall”), she had a full-on hit pop album of her own by 1991 (“Heart in Motion”). But she never fully went one way or the other. At the point in which an all-out pop album would have made the most sense — just following the Cetera hit — she went the other direction and made an impressionistic gospel album, “Lead Me On.” Its singles tanked on pop radio but it went onto become her critical peak and has been called (by CCM magazine, et. al.) the best gospel album of all time. Likewise, when “Heart in Motion” was going through the roof a few years later, Grant was careful to let people know she hadn’t sold out as she was so often accused of doing by the hardliners (she gets bonus points, in my opinion, for having been condemned by Jimmy Swaggart). The album closes with the all-out praise song “Hope Set High” (“if there’s anything good that happens in life, it’s from Jesus”), a song she memorably performed last weekend.
So were the young gays of the era, hopelessly stranded in the Bible Belt with no hope of escape until college, just latching on to the closest thing we could get to a lighthouse in Grant? Not really — it’s deeper than that. I and many I know were also listening to Madonna, Janet Jackson, Cyndi Lauper and Tina Turner (we all figured “Private Dancer” was her first album) back then too, even if we had to sneak their tapes into the house. It’s hard to know if Grant meant any of this intentionally or if it was her own way of sneaking in some stuff past the gatekeepers, but there are glimmers of gay hope dotted all throughout her discography from as early as 1980 when she sang the lyrics her then-husband, Gary Chapman, had written (“all I ever have to be is what you made me/any more or less would be a step out of your plan”) to her own lyrics just a year later (“being this person inside of me/unafraid of being me/no more faces to hide behind …/even if I am the only one who wants to fly”) and even much later, with the 2003 song “Out in the Open” (“there is no jury, there is no judge/ready and waiting are the steady arms of love”). If it all sounds vague or like searching for something that’s not there, keep in mind, more often than not, Grant was nearly as subtle with her Christian references. It seems laughable now, but people used to parse her lyric sheets and balk at how few references there were to Jesus and/or God anytime she had a new album out, noting how increasingly infrequent they were becoming.
I don’t particularly care what Grant’s personal views are on homosexuality. Sure, it would be great if she would at least take the Dolly Parton approach to embracing/acknowledging us. Lord knows we need all the help we can get on the LGBT rights front where each step ahead feels like pulling teeth. But conversely, what does it say about us as fans if we need some sort of acknowledgement from our favorite singers? I do get it — when you’ve invested emotionally and financially in a singer/brand who’s meant so much to you, especially during the raw, painful formative years (and let me tell you, it’s lonely being the only gay fish in an evangelical, Bible Belt pond when you’re 13), it means a lot to know those you admire are on board. But as adults, ultimately that need for validation says more about our own desperation than anything it might suggest about Grant. For the record, Sandi Patty, perhaps my other all-time favorite singer, is just as evasive. There are quietly gay people in her camp and she once told a group of gay fans who hosted a tribute post-show event for her in New York that she was “feeling the love,” but she, too, stops short of any condoning type-of statement. They’ll both talk to any small-town newspaper in which they happen to have an upcoming show, yet my Blade interview requests go curiously unacknowledged. Perhaps they feel they’ve already rocked their Christian fan bases enough having spent the last 10-15 years rebuilding after each going through controversial divorces (Sandi’s first husband, John Helvering, and Amy’s, Gary Chapman, were huge parts of their touring entourages in the ’80s; John ran sound for Sandi; Gary was Amy’s band director on several of her biggest tours).
My ultimate frustration with loving these singers falls into a whole other category entirely — to my endless chagrin, whole chapters of their touring history are missing in action. Sure, I love mainstream pop and rock too, but if you’re a Stevie Nicks fan or, merciful heavens, a Tori Amos fan, and you’re willing to look in some, ahem, unofficial places, you can find audio circulating of practically every show they’ve ever done. Same with the Stones, Bob Dylan, Springsteen — all the big dogs you’d expect. Other acts, like Pearl Jam, have recognized the insatiable appetites of their staunchest legions, and have released “official” bootlegs, manna from heaven for those who’ve worn out the studio recordings and spent many hard-earned dollars following them around. Even Cyndi Lauper, who traditionally has varied up her live show way more than, say Madonna or Janet, has a surprisingly rich bevy of fan-generated recordings out there. Different artists have different feelings on this sort of thing (the Grateful Dead famously encouraged it), but the sticking point for many is that it’s OK as long as you don’t attempt to profit off it.
Amy and Sandi both fall into that category — Sandi didn’t even bat an eye when people plunked down camcorders on mini-tripods at a Nashville event she hosted last year — and yet huge swaths of their concert-giving history are unaccounted for. And I’m not talking about obscure stuff, either — tours like Amy’s “Heart in Motion Tour” and Sandi’s “Another Time Another Place Tour” were mammoth operations playing arenas for months on end all around the country 20 years ago. On one hand, it’s not terribly shocking — these are not singers, historically, with wildly inventive bands who shook up their set lists drastically from night to night. However, when 25 years has gone by and you can’t even find a complete set list and no official live album or VHS concert tape was ever released, this brings its own level of frustration. These people have spent half their lives on the road, yet there’s precious little evidence that they’ve even left their living rooms.
Just for the record, my holy grails in this vein are — Sandi: anything pre-’83, the ’84-’85 “From the Heart Tour” (her first cross-country jaunt), the ’91-’92 “Another Time Another Place Tour” or the ’98 “Artist of My Soul”-era dates. For Amy: always wondered how complete the “Age to Age” concert video is — at 90 minutes including Gary’s set, one imagines a few numbers might have ended up on the cutting room floor. Only a handful of individual numbers have ever surfaced from the 18-month-long “Unguarded Tour” — surely somebody taped this at least one night (soundboard tapes were reportedly made each night but have never surfaced in fan circles). Also curiously missing from trading circles is her biggest tour ever — the “Heart in Motion Tour.” Audio has been known to exist, but nobody I’ve ever talked to claims to have it. I’m totally down for a no-profit swap if anybody has any of this stuff.
If there’s an upside to all this, it’s that Amy and Sandi are still out there and active. Patty records regularly and has released an album almost every year of the last decade. Grant only records here and there (she’s reportedly working on a new album), but she tours almost constantly. It’s a blessing I don’t take for granted as a few of my other favorites from the era — Paris and Becker — have, with precious few exceptions, completely stopped recording and touring.
Time to move on and get a life? Yeah, probably, but isn’t it uncanny how deep the nerve is that takes you back to the first music you ever discovered on your own? For me, it defies explanation. And so the quest/obsession continues. I’m even — don’t laugh — planning to check out a D.C. Women of Faith conference in August. Ordinarily I’d rather sit home and watch paint dry (I’ve left much of that theology long behind), but — holy of holies — Amy and Sandi are BOTH scheduled to be there!
Television
ICYMI: ‘Overcompensating’ a surprisingly sweet queer treat
A sweet, savvy show about breaking free to embrace your true self

Pride month 2025 is now behind us, and while it’s safe to say that this year’s celebrations had a darker edge than usual, it’s also true that they came with a particularly rich bounty of new queer movies and shows to entertain us – so many, in fact, that even if we are facing a lull until the fall another harvest of fresh content, there are still plenty of titles – which, for whatever reason, were off your radar – for you to catch up on in the meantime.
One of the most notable of these – the bingeworthy series “Overcompensating” (now streaming on Amazon Prime) – will most definitely have been ON the radar for the plentiful fans of creator and star Benito Skinner, the actor/comedian who rose to viral fame through his content on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. For anyone else, it might have easily slipped through the cracks.
Created and written by Skinner as a loosely autobiographical “college comedy,” it aims for the kind of raucous, explicitly sexed-up tone one expects from the genre as it centers on Benny (Skinner), newly arrived as a freshman at prestigious Yates University. A former football jock and “golden boy” at his midwestern high school, he’s the picture of idealized youthful masculinity; he’s also deep in the closet, struggling to keep his sexuality hidden and maintain his macho front under the intense scrutiny of the college’s social scene – and under the resentful eye of his older sister Grace (Mary Beth Barone), who has already secured her own place at the top of the pecking order.
In the first episode, Benny’s difficulties are eased when he meets Carmen (Wally Baram), another freshman trying to navigate the politics of college life; a gamer from a home marred by tragedy, she’s an outsider who feels like she’s putting on an act, too, and they click – giving him the convenient “cover” of female companionship while providing them both with much-needed support and encouragement. He’s also befriended by a handsome film major from England (Rish Shah), who has already caught his eye, stirring other kinds of feelings and possibly even reciprocating them. Meanwhile, he’s being courted by the school’s “exclusive secret society” – headed by his sister’s aggressively “alpha” boyfriend Pete (Adam DiMarco) – and trying to stay interested in his studies, despite a growing realization that a career in business doesn’t actually appeal to him all that much.
That’s a lot to juggle for anybody, even an overachiever like Benny – whose “lucky” life so far has largely been the result of playing a role he is finding harder and harder to maintain. As the series goes on through its eight-episode arc, it becomes clear that he’s not the only one who is “keeping up appearances,” and he, along with the other confused and damaged young people in his orbit, begins the painful (but often hilarious) process of evolution that is required in order to become truly oneself.
Directed toward appealing to a younger demographic, “Overcompensating” is the kind of show that requires a few episodes worth of invested time to make an impression that feels like substance. Full of the bawdy farcical antics that go hand in hand with stories about hormonally charged college kids, it’s not above leaning into the formulas and tropes that have always driven these kinds of comedies. At first, while its broadly comedic strokes and frequently explicit sexual hijinks might elicit plenty of chuckles, the show might easily feel tiresome for more mature audiences; there’s a nostalgic fun to it, made even more appealing, somehow, by the “political incorrectness” of its frequently sexist and homophobic humor, but for a while things may feel like an unnecessary attempt to reinvent “Animal House” for the Gen Z crowd.
By the time the season reaches its halfway point, however, things have started to get real. The antics of these horny almost-adults take on a more pointed absurdity, informed by the increasingly tangled web of defensive deceit they weave among themselves – and, as things draw toward a cliffhanger climax, the consequences of maintaining it – until it achieves a sense of empathy toward them all. There’s a wisdom that smacks of lived authenticity underlying the whole affair, transforming it from the “sexploitative” teen comedy of its surface into something deeper. To be sure, things stay expectedly wacky, and the soap-operatic melodrama of its twists and reversals continue to maintain the show’s “mature YA” appeal; but beneath those trappings, by the end of the season a truer identity has begun to emerge, just as its characters have begun to find their own levels of self-actualization for themselves.
As creator, primary writer, and star, it’s obviously Skinner who deserves much of the credit. While it might be tempting, early on, to dismiss the show as an “ego project,” the internet-spawned sensation proves his talents quickly enough to get past such judgy suspicions, delivering a pitch-perfect blend of sauciness and sensitivity that extends its appeal toward both ends of the taste spectrum; just as crucially, he brings the same aforementioned “lived authenticity” to his winning performance – after all, he’s essentially playing himself in a fictionalized version of his own life – while also making sure that equal time (and compassion) is afforded all the other characters around him, each of whom are pushing at the boundaries of their own respective “closets,” too. It’s unavoidable to notice that – like most of his co-stars – he’s plainly a decade too old to be playing a college student; but by the time we reach that crucial halfway turning point, we’ve become too engaged by him to care.
The show is full of excellent performances, in fact. Relative newcomers Baram and Barone offer layers of complex nuance, while the more familiar DiMarco (“White Lotus”) is close to heartbreaking as the toxic BMOC clinging to the illusion of power as his life begins unraveling around him. Other standouts include the mononymic actress Holmes as Carmen’s “wild child” roommate, solidly likable turns as Benny’s parents from mature veterans Connie Britten and Kyle MacLachlan (whose presence, along with stylish elements in several key scenes, hints at an homage-ish nod to the late David Lynch), and podcaster Owen Thiele as an openly gay fellow student who has Benny “clocked” from the moment they meet. Finally, Lukas Gage makes a deep impression as a former high school teammate at the heart of Benny’s most haunting memory.
There’s no official word yet on whether “Overcompensating” will be renewed for a second season, despite the multiple loose ends left dangling at the end of its first; it has proven to be popular, and Skinner’s large fanbase makes it likely that the story will continue. Even if it doesn’t, the place of uncertainty in which it has left its characters rings true enough to serve as a satisfying endpoint.
As for us, we hope that won’t happen. For all its sophomoric humor, generic plot twists, and purposefully gratuitous sexual titillation, it’s one of the sweetest, kindest, and most savvy shows we’ve seen about breaking free from conformity to embrace your true self – and that’s a message that applies whether you’re queer, straight, or anywhere in between.
Photos
PHOTOS: Independence Day Weekend in Rehoboth
Wicked Green Pool Party, fireworks among festivities

Vacationers and residents alike enjoyed Independence Day Weekend activities in Rehoboth Beach, Del. The Wicked Green Pool Party drew hundreds to the CAMP Rehoboth fundraiser on Saturday. That evening, revelers went to the rooftops to watch the fireworks display.
(Washington Blade photos by Daniel Truitt)













Music & Concerts
Red, White, and Beyoncé: Queen Bey takes Cowboy Carter to D.C. for the Fourth of July
The legendary music icon performed on July 4 and 7 to a nearly sold-out Northwest Stadium.

Just in time for Independence Day, Beyoncé lit up Landover’s Commanders Field (formerly FedEx Field) with fireworks and fiery patriotism, bringing her deeply moving and genre-defying “Cowboy Carter” tour to the Washington, D.C. area.
The tour, which takes the global icon across nine cities in support of her chart-topping and Grammy-winning country album “Cowboy Carter,” landed in Prince George’s County, Maryland, over the Fourth of July weekend. From the moment Beyoncé stepped on stage, it was clear this was more than just a concert — it was a reclamation.
Drawing from classic Americana, sharp political commentary, and a reimagined vision of country music, the show served as a powerful reminder of how Black Americans — especially Black women — have long been overlooked in spaces they helped create. “Cowboy Carter” released in March 2024, is the second act in Beyoncé’s genre-traversing trilogy. With it, she became the first Black woman to win a Grammy for Best Country Album and also took home the coveted Album of the Year.
The record examines the Black American experience through the lens of country music, grappling with the tension between the mythology of the American Dream and the lived realities of those historically excluded from it. That theme comes alive in the show’s opening number, “American Requiem,” where Beyoncé sings:
“Said I wouldn’t saddle up, but
If that ain’t country, tell me, what is?
Plant my bare feet on solid ground for years
They don’t, don’t know how hard I had to fight for this
When I sing my song…”
Throughout the performance, Beyoncé incorporated arresting visuals: Black cowboys on horseback, vintage American iconography, and Fox News clips criticizing her genre shift — all woven together with voiceovers from country legends like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. The result was a multimedia masterclass in storytelling and subversion.
The “Cowboy Carter” tour has been a social media sensation for weeks, with fans scrambling for tickets, curating elaborate “cowboy couture” outfits, and tailgating under the summer sun. At Commanders Field, thousands waited in long lines for exclusive merch and even longer ones to enter the stadium — a pilgrimage that, for many, felt more like attending church than a concert.
One group out in full force for the concert was Black queer men — some rocking “denim on denim on denim on denim,” while others opted for more polished Cowboy Couture looks. The celebration of Black identity within Americana was ever-present, making the concert feel like the world’s biggest gay country-western club.
A standout moment of the night was the appearance of Beyoncé’s 13-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. Commanding the stage with poise and power, she matched the intensity and choreography of her mother and the professional dancers — a remarkable feat for someone her age and a clear sign that the Carter legacy continues to shine.
It’s been nearly two decades since Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child parted ways, and since then, she’s more than lived up to her title as the voice of a generation. With “Cowboy Carter,” she’s not just making music — she’s rewriting history and reclaiming the space Black artists have always deserved in the country canon.
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