And apparently in Malaysia, censors feel the same way. "I Kissed a Girl" has reportedly been retitled "I Kissed" with the words "a girl" censored when the song is being played on radio.

Perry's catchy bisexual flavoured "I Kissed a Girl," which has topped the US Billboard Hot 100, "Canadian Hot 100" and Australian ARIA Charts, has got the Rolling Stone magazine calling it "a vanilla recounting of her chick-on-chick exploits." Reviewer Nicole Frehsee added, "She sounds like the type who makes out with her BFF just to get a dude's attention."

And Frehsee is not alone in her judgment.

Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani says the song "isn't problematic because it promotes homosexuality, but because its appropriation of the gay lifestyle exists for the sole purpose of garnering attention - both from Perry's boyfriend and her audience."

Doug Rule of Washington, D.C.'s gay and lesbian news magazine Metro Weekly has called for the singer who "comes across as a taunting, insecure schoolyard bully with serious gender and sex issues" to undergo sensitivity training. "We're just pawns in her transgressive experiments, she has to resort to the unfortunately not-uncommon use of 'gay' sexual identity as a slur - as in, someone no one likes or wants to be."

When interviewed by The New Gay web site, she admits to not having actually kissed a girl and that the song is a" fantasy, it's a song about curiosity."



The 24-year-old former Christian gospel singer and daughter of two Christian pastors who was forbidden to listen to secular music as a child is also under attack from the Evangelical Christian community.

The UK Guardian reported: "What a sad picture of a lost child who has been swept away by the carnal pleasures of the world,' reads one entry on the Christian website Planetwisdom.com. 'We need to be lifting this gal up in prayer. While we're at it, let's toss up a prayer for her parents, too. Not to mention the countless young girls who will buy into this lesbian chic message.'"

Meanwhile, her Nov 2007 single "Ur So Gay" in which she tells her "emo" boyfriend to "hang himself with his H&M scarf" has come under close scrutiny again. Although the song is obviously not about homosexuals, activists have deemed the song homophobic for using the catchphrase "you're so gay" - a phrase frequently used by teenagers to mean 'dumb', 'lame' or any other pejorative.

In his post titled what do you have against gay people, Katy Perry?, blogger Duane Moody wrote: "Katy dear, this is 2008. We need to stop using gay as an insult; being gay is normal. If you use 'gay' as synonym for bad, negative, horrible, stupid, or any of the many other derogatory words it has been used in place of to place insult, then you are propagating and continuing the underlying bigotry that is so fervent in this country. Continuing this form of 'hidden' bigotry is just intolerable, and I for one feel like I must continue to speak out against it."

"It isn't 'cute' or 'funny' that she kissed another girl, it is normal; whether or not she can deal with her homosexual feelings is her problem, not ours.

"If you don't see this as a big deal, ask yourself: would it be cute or funny if she wrote a song about how weird it was for her to kiss a black person?? How do you think that would that go over? Additionally, if she were to write a song about how awful a boy was because he was so "stereotypically black", how would that sound?"




When this writer sent the YouTube links to some gay friends for their comments, it turned out that many are closet Katy Perry fans. Readers, what are your thoughts?