Chely Wright, who famously came out and announced that she was a lesbian just over a year ago, has married her girlfriend Lauren Blitzer. Wright posted wedding photos on Twitter, showing both she and Blitzer wearing white gowns. After announcing her sexual orientation in May, 2010, Wright did an interview where she addressed the mindset in the country music scene regarding homosexuality. While the format has morphed from its roots of sweet melodies, true stories of pain and suffering and steel guitars and fiddles to what can mostly be classified as bad rock and roll performed by people in cowboy hats, it seems that the long-rooted resistance to anything else that is non-traditional remains.
In that interview over a year ago, Wright noted, "It’s the unforgivable. Historically, country music would rather an artist be a drunk – they even encourage and endorse that one. You get good money from Jim Beam to put that emblem on the side of your bus. I was on the Crown Royal tour, and I have to say it was one of my favorite tours. They would rather you were a drug addict than be gay. They will forgive you if you beat your wife, lose your kids to state, get six divorces, make a sex tape, get labeled as a tramp – any and all of it is better than being gay."
Wright is, well…right, of course. And it’s odd from a genre that has been willing to all but forget its roots and open the doors for such a watered down version of its original format that Alan Jackson and George Strait created the song "Murder on Music Row," an allusion to the fact that country music had been wiped out of Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee in favor of "drums and rock and roll guitars [that] are mixed up in your face."
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