Talk:Steve Grand

Lengthy quote about conversion therapy

MisfitToys has restored a lengthy quote from Grand about conversion therapy. I removed it because it is now the largest single item of content in this article and WP:UNDUE. In the spirit of WP:BRRD, I would like to invite MisfitToys to explain why they believe this lengthy quotation should be included in the article. - MrX 21:57, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

So the article is short at the moment; why not include relevant quotes in which the article subject comments on a major formative experience? Much of the criticism directed at Grand has focused specifically on his refusal to condemn such therapy, so it makes sense to include his comments which explain his attitude toward it. If the article was much longer, I doubt you'd complain about the quote length; would deleting it now and re-adding when the article is longer make any sense? MisfitToys (talk) 20:03, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Even if the article was three times larger, I would object to this quote, because of it's extent. I'm not sure what make this quote any better than the many other quotes that Grand has made, for example about being viewed as a role model; quotes about his musical training; his views on relationships, etc. In my mind, this quote overemphasizes conversion therapy relative the entire (published) story of his life. At the very least, it should be shortened.

You may not be aware of WP:BRD and WP:STATUSQUO, but you really should not have simply reinserted this content without discussion. Hopefully, other editors will join the discussion so we can find a way forward. If not, we can perhaps refer it to WP:DRN for mediation. - MrX 22:07, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why the article calls it conversion therapy. In an interview, Steve said: "I was not in conversion therapy. I was seeing a Christian therapist, who, among many beliefs, believed I would be happier if I didn’t live life as a gay man...." http://instinctmagazine.com/article/steve-grand-all-american-man#sthash.s6dfRAgH.dpuf . Why should the article call it conversion therapy if he doesn't? Even if the article might fit the definition of conversion therapy, it ought to at least acknowledge that Steve Grand does not consider it that. Omc (talk) 22:53, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree. My first draft of the article did not mention conversion therapy. Feel free to BEBOLD and FIXIT.- MrX 23:21, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Done. I WASBOLD and FIXEDIT. Omc (talk) 02:19, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

"First"

It is true that Grand is arguably the closest that an out gay male country singer has ever gotten to mainstream stardom, but he's not the first to exist. In fact, he's not even the first one to attain sufficient "working musician" notability to have a Wikipedia article, as we already have articles about Mark Weigle, Drake Jensen and Shane McAnally — though admittedly McAnally crossed the notability bar as a songwriter for other artists after giving up on a performing career that never really took off and Weigle's retired, Jensen is still a reasonably successful working musician (he may not have a Carrie Underwood-sized audience yet, but he's got a big enough audience to not discount him as a non-entity, and as great as this has been for him Steve Grand doesn't have a Carrie Underwood-sized audience yet either.) And for that matter there are probably enough sources out there for us to pull together articles about both Doug Stevens and Patrick Haggerty's band Lavender Country, too. (In fact, there's one sandboxed on the latter already at User:Mycota/Lavender Country — though it looks like the creator abandoned it, so I'm going to copy it to my sandbox and try to work some rescue magic.)

Accordingly, I've adjusted the claim that he was the "first gay male country singer" to be more accurate, because while he was clearly the first to garner mainstream media attention in the US he wasn't the first to exist. Bearcat (talk) 02:19, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

More positive

The negative reaction seems to outweigh the positive on this article. Could we balance it out more, please? Defender miz (talk) 02:53, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, there seems to be a lot of petty commentary being added to the article, even getting into debate about whether he's even actually any good — which isn't what we're here for. The Slate comment about how the song is really an "all-American power ballad" is particularly pointless and snide and doesn't serve any useful purpose here — a lot of mainstream country music these days is "generic all-American power ballad" type stuff that has more in common with 1970s soft rock than it does with the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack, so that claim hardly distinguishes Grand as being outside of the norm for his genre. Bearcat (talk) 20:01, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Internet Celebrity

Steve Grand Accepts U.S. Marine’s Invitation to 2015 Marine Corps Ball http://www.towleroad.com/2015/09/steve-grand-accepts/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.156.216.133 (talk) 03:51, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Steve Grand interview for attitude magazine

Steve Grand gave attitude magazine a fantastically revealing and open-hearted interview in its September 2017 edition. He was also the cover star of that issue, at least the copy I bought (attitude has a habit of doing different covers with different people). I think we should perhaps mention this? --2A02:1811:429:F200:F84E:ACA1:5605:E558 (talk) 23:33, 6 November 2017 (UTC)