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Jean and Mike,

I agree with Mike on this one (and with the basic premise we uncovered in this post) that if there is enough of a collection of any distinquishable music genre, and it's good enough for nomination consideration, then we are happy to have a genre. At first I mistakenly thought folks wanted a genre simply based on sexual preference, but in reality, the suggestion was for topics that deal with specifically gay issues. I made it clear it seems unlikely that we'll get enough entries to qualify, however 2 years ago, one of our members who wrote Cabaret music recruited all the Cabaret artists he could to enter their stuff and guess what? It easily qualified as a genre, and more interesting, a year later it produced the overall song of the year winner. It's all about playing by the same rules as everyone and else and earning the distinction through merit, and not through political correctness (or incorrectness depending on your viewpoint).

As for Contemporary Christian, we generally use that genre for songs that specifically mention "Christ" in their music, though sometimes songs simply with "God" in them win. We use Gospel to cover what sounds like Church music (based on production, and often vocal arrangements) and 2 years ago the winner of that genre was Jewish.... but his song used a traditional chorus/spiritual type production and performance and it fit. We couldn't care less what someone's religion actually is. If we have a religious song that simply can't fit into one of those genres, we use Ethnic, not to de-value other religions, but actually to represent really good music even if there are only a couple entries.. and we do that for ANY small genre.. we find a place to squeeze it in.. but we don't give it it's own name and category recognition unless there's a large collection of it to choose from and a large number of worth nominations.

Last year, Contempoary Christian was one of the largest genres of entries (probably 6-7th on the list.) So far this year that's not at all the case, but Gospel IS far larger and probably is the 6-7th biggest genre so far. CC is one of the smallest.. you just never know where the entries are coming from. Last year 2 of the top 8 albums of the year, including the album of the year winner, were Contemporary Christian and those artists were 100% comfortable being described under that banner. Who knows, perhaps in a year or two, a Gay/Lesbian genre will emerge and win some big awards. That's up to the artists/writers involved.

Thanks to everyone for getting back to civilized discussion on the actual topic.

Brian