Nashville, Tenn. ? Never mind that country music is considered bedrock conservative, the unofficial red-state soundtrack. This year, some of country’s most famous names are singing in movies with gay and transsexual themes.

Dolly Parton received an Oscar nomination for “Travelin’ Thru,” a song she wrote and sang for “Transamerica,” while Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris are heard on the Oscar front-runner “Brokeback Mountain.”

Nelson, always an iconoclast in his music and politics, even released a gay cowboy song on Valentine’s Day, “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other).”

But don’t expect a wave of gay love songs to sweep across the heartland anytime soon.

Veteran country stars like Parton, Nelson and Harris are free to reach out to a gay audience because they already have loyal fans. Their careers aren’t driven by hit records because country radio already ignores them.

Parton, who has always embraced her large gay following, said she’s too stubborn to worry about a negative response.

“I’m old enough and cranky enough now that if someone tried to tell me what to do, I’d tell them where to put it,” Parton, 60, said recently.

Country station WXBX in Johnson City devoted two days of its morning show to letting listeners talk about Willie and Dolly’s “gay” songs.

“We got the sense that the audience was disappointed in these artists. For our purposes, we probably wouldn’t be interested in much airplay,” said operations manager Bill Hagy, noting that Parton and Nelson aren’t really mainstream country artists anymore.

“In my opinion,” said country fan Jamie Billman, who lives in Valley Springs, Calif., but was on vacation Thursday in Nashville, “it does kind of offend what country music stands for.”

“Transamerica” stars “Desperate Housewives” actress Felicity Huffman as a transsexual who learns a week before sex-change surgery that he has a son from a fleeting heterosexual encounter, then embarks on a cross-country road trip with the teenager.

Parton wrote the closing-credits song, which has a gospel flavor with references to God and redemption. She sings, “Like a poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song/ I’m just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home.”

“I have a person who works in my organization who once was a woman and now is a man,” Parton said. “I didn’t know for years that this person had had a sex change. I know what a wonderful person he is, and I based some of my feelings (in the song) on my feelings for him and on knowing what he went through.”

On the “Brokeback Mountain” soundtrack, Nelson, 72, sings the gentle “He Was a Friend of Mine.” Harris performs “A Love That Will Never Grow Old,” by Gustavo Santaolalla and Bernie Taupin. Her fragile voice fits the sparse, ethereal arrangement, evoking the wide-open Wyoming landscape. The song recently won a Golden Globe award.