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"I love those brides," Grant recently said in an interview.
Christian music icon Amy Grant, who was recently honored as a 2022 Kennedy Center Honor recipient, is making sure everyone knows how much she loves her queer niece.
Grant, 62, revealed last year that she was hosting her niece's wedding to her female fiance.
The first Christian artist to have an album go platinum described her progressive views to The Washington Post: "Jesus, you just narrowed it down to two things: love God and love each other. I mean, hey, that's pretty simple." Grant also detailed her reaction when her niece first came out: What a gift to our whole family to just widen the experience of our whole family.
Some apparently took offense to Grant being a good aunt, but she wasn't having it.
"I never chase any of those rabbits down the rabbit hole," Grant told People in an interview published earlier this week. "I love my family, I love those brides. They're wonderful, our family is better, and you should be able to be who you are with your family, and be loved by them."
The farm is the same one where she married her husband Vince Gill in 2000.
"I own a farm that I bought back in the '90s and they were just looking for a beautiful place to get married," Grant said. "So, [my niece] and Sam got married on the same hillside where Vince and I got married."
One of the people criticizing Grant was conservative evangelist Franklin Graham. He took to social media to call out Grant for hosting the same-sex wedding, writing that she was misrepresenting text in the Christian Bible.
A petition by the Christian grassroots organization Faithful America has more than 15,000 signatures in support of Grant.
"Love is love, no matter what Franklin Graham says -- and social justice Christians can't just sit back and let powerful members of the religious right rake Amy Grant over the coals for supporting her niece and her relationship," the petition states. The petition continues: "Graham's words only served to inspire yet more hatred in others."
The group called Grant's decision to host her niece's wedding at her house "a beautiful act of pro-LGBTQ affirmation from an artist whose music means so much to so many American Christians."
Grant has been an ally for years.
In 2013, she told Pride Source, "I know that the religious community has not been very welcoming [to LGBTQ+ people], but I just want to stress that the journey of faith brings us into community, but it's really about one relationship. The journey of faith is just being willing and open to have a relationship with God. And everybody is welcome. Everybody."
