There are persons within all the denominations, but particularly in the United Methodist Church, who are dead set against persons who would be ordained. There is also language in the official legal documents of the UMC that is clearly anti-gay and anti-queer. I had a lot of fear about even getting close to anything that was organized religion , partly because of all the suffering many of my queer, gay friends [endured] at the hands of organized religion. Everybody knows what the oppressive part of the church is, but not as many people are as aware of the fundamentally life-affirming and augmenting experience of the progressive church.
In the summer of , when I was sixteen, my older sister took me to my first Indigo Girls concert. I crushed on Amy Ray without knowing to call it that. All I knew was I loved the Indigo Girls. But it was just an inside joke.
The two met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia , part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. They released a self-produced, full-length record album entitled Strange Fire in and contracted with a major record company in After releasing nine albums with major record labels from through , they have now resumed self-producing albums with their own IG Recordings company.
Trivia time! What do Indigo Girls and Milli Vanilli have in common? They were later stripped of their Grammy Award for obvious reasons. Though they lost for Best New Artist, that year Indigo Girls did take home the Best Contemporary Folk Album Grammy Award, and their song "Closer to Fine" off their winning self-titled album helped form the lesbian duo's reputation as literate, insightful, and philosophical singer-songwriters—a well-deserved rep they still retain. While Milli Vanilli has become a punch line, Indigo Girls remain revered artists.