J-Lo on AMERICAN IDOL's First Openly Gay Top 30 Contestant: 'The World is Changing'

By: Caryn Robbins Feb. 13, 2014

On last night's AMERICAN IDOL, history was made when judges Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban and Harry Connick Jr. voted to put the first openly gay contestant into the singing competition's Top 30 semi-final round.

20-year-old Emkay Nobilette wowed the judges with her performance of Ed Sheeran's "The A Team" during the solo round of the show's Hollywood Week.

During last night's final judgement, Lopez expressed her support of the singer, commenting, "I think with you it was kind of difficult because we fell in love with your voice and your style, but you're not the typical American Idol,"

Agreed Nobilette, "No, I'm not."

"We wonder: Is that a good thing, is that a bad thing? ... What will America think? ... How will you fit in? Do you not fit in?" Harry Connick Jr. added.

"I'm very obviously gay, and there are always going to be people in American and everywhere else who are definitely going to hate me," replied the singer. "But I think that in the last two years there been a lot of things that have really changed that, and really made that a positive thing,"

"Thank goodness," said Connick. After a dramatic pause from the judges, Lopez declared, "The world is changing, I think - we think that you could be an American Idol." "The world is changing," Keith Urban agreed as Nobilette walked out the door.

Check out her performance below: