Katy Perry has a big dance hit with her pseudo-lesbian-curious song "I Kissed A Girl." The singer has been clawing for a break since at least 2001, and it turns out that before discovering the celebrity-making power of girl-on-girl tongue this year, and even before trying to win fame via her "really big boobs" in 2004, Perry pitched herself as a Christian singer. Her debut album was released under her prior recording name, Katy Hudson, and included gospel songs like "Faith Won't Fail" and "Last Call," the latter featuring the phone number for the church where her father was a pastor. UPDATE: Here's what Perry, still in her holy music phase, told Alison Rosen of Seventeen magazine about premarital sex:

Katy has a steady boyfriend, but she doesn't believe in sex before marriage. "I know what it does to people," she says. "One night my boyfriend and I went a little too far and I felt like I'd fallen so far away from God. I doubted myself and my strength. I was so weak at the time in my relationship with Christ."



If someone is going to have sex, however, Katy absolutely believes that person should use a condom: "Some Christians think that if you use a condom, it's premeditated. So nobody uses a condom at all and they have sex and get pregnant the first time."

That's a far cry from lyrics like, "I got so brave, drink in hand / Lost my discretion... I kissed a girl and I liked it... I kissed a girl just to try it."

Devout Christian music fans are now trying to figure out how Perry fell off the path of earnest righteousness, or if she was ever on it. But the preacher's daughter who once said "if people buy the record, that's all the credibility I need" has probably just been looking for a winning angle of any sort and, after keeping her faith in the power of sex, has finally found it.

Below, the video for "I Kissed A Girl," in which Perry slinks around in lingerie with other women.

[Radosh]