A conservative Christian organization lamented Katy Perry’s loss of “wisdom” when she released “I Kissed a Girl.”
Katy Perry/YouTube
“I Kissed a Girl” was released as Katy Perry’s official debut single in 2008.
However, she had previously released contemporary Christian music under her birth name, Katheryn Hudson.
The queer fantasy in “I Kissed a Girl” inspired a small moral panic from her former audience. Adam Holz of PluggedinOnline — a division of the conservative and anti-gay organization Focus on the Family — condemned the song in an article titled “A Tale of Two Katys.”
“At the moment, Katy Hudson’s flirty and ‘dirty’ alter ego is in the ascendant. Whether or not she’ll ever ‘come to her senses’ as the Bible says the prodigal son did in Luke 15 remains to be seen,” Holz wrote.
He added: “Katy is indeed living down to a damaging, demeaning stereotype, one that our culture has already branded as ‘girls gone wild.’ Perhaps one day she’ll recall the wisdom of her youth.”
Instead, as the years went on, “I Kissed a Girl” was seen as increasingly problematic on the other side of the aisle. Many progressives have criticized the song for trivializing lesbian relationships and feeding a biphobic narrative.
Perry told Glamour in 2018 that she would change the lyrics if she were to release the song today: “Lyrically, it has a couple of stereotypes in it. Your mind changes so much in 10 years, and you grow so much.”
