Kacey Musgraves is one of a number of celebrities who have penned love letters to the LGBTQ community to celebrate Gay Pride Month.

Musgraves challenged the norms of country radio with her third single, "Follow Your Arrow," in which she casually sings of same-sex kissing before advising, "Just follow your arrows wherever it points." But she writes in Billboard that growing up in East Texas, her view of the LGBTQ community was filtered through "closed-minded viewpoints and sneers. I love where I came from but the stance on homosexuality is unfortunately still pretty archaic and behind the facts."

Musgraves started to look at things differently when one of her closest friends came out to her just after high school.

"Through his long pauses and deep breaths I knew it was something that was very hard for him to say — especially considering the homophobic words he heard daily by his own father. His bravery and honesty completely changed the way that I'd thought I viewed the entire subject," she admits.

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When she moved to Nashville to pursue her music career, Musgraves started hanging out at some of the gay clubs in town, and she says, "It started to enrage me that I'd had some previous misunderstanding about a group of people that I now love so much and have so much in common with." As she got to know more about the country music community, she realized that many people who were gay in country still felt they had to be in the closet. She wrote "Follow Your Arrow" in part to share her own awakening in her music, knowing she would take some criticism for it.

Released as the third single from Musgraves' breakthrough major label debut, Same Trailer, Different Park, "Follow Your Arrow" did not receive widespread support from country radio, but it went on to win Song of the Year at the 2014 CMA Awards.

"'Follow Your Arrow' may have tanked on the country radio chart, but that song specifically has brought so much meaning, happiness, and listeners to my music that may not have been there otherwise," Musgraves writes. "So, to my friends in the LGBTQ community: thank you. While the career stuff is great, it's fleeting. You changed me as a human."

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