ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! on September 17 after the late-night host commented on the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
The suspension triggered strong responses across social media and beyond. Hashtags like #CancelDisneyPlus and #CancelHulu trended as users shared screenshots of their canceled subscriptions. Lawmakers, unions, and advocacy groups joined the conversation, framing the move as an attack on free expression rather than a programming choice.
With cancellations surging, many subscribers reported technical issues. On Reddit’s r/Fauxmoi, one post read, “The page to cancel your Hulu/Disney+ subscription keeps crashing.” Others said they faced looping logins and stalled forms. These firsthand accounts suggest Disney’s systems struggled under the unusual traffic volume.
Greenfield said that when packaged goods company Unilever bought Ben & Jerry’s for $326 million in 2000, the “unique merger agreement” allowed them the independence to use their brand to speak out “in support of peace, justice, and human rights, not as abstract concepts, but in relation to real events happening in our world.” Today, he claimed it’s “profoundly disappointing to come to the conclusion that that independence, the very basis of our sale to Unilever, is gone.”
“And it’s happening at a time when our country’s current administration is attacking civil rights, voting rights, the rights of immigrants, women, and the LGBTQ community,” Greenfield continued. “Standing up for the values of justice, equity, and our shared humanity has never been more important, and yet Ben & Jerry’s has been silenced, sidelined for fear of upsetting those in power. It’s easy to stand up and speak out when there’s nothing at risk. The real test of values is when times are challenging and you have something to lose.”
Ben & Jerry’s was one of the first brands to support marriage equality, renaming its signature Chubby Hubby flavor to “Hubby Hubby” at its Vermont shops after same-sex couples were granted the right to legally marry in 2009. Today, it is one of the major corporations that has stood by its diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, saying on its website that “instead of dismantling the programs designed to create equity across our society we should be dismantling white supremacy.”
Ben & Jerry’s filed a lawsuit Unilever in November, accusing the company of violating its merger agreement by silencing its social media posts about Black Lives Matter and Palestine, firing the then-CEO David Stever for his posts, and blocking company donations to groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and the Council on American Islamic Relations.
“It was always about more than just ice cream; it was a way to spread love and invite others into the fight for equity, justice and a better world. Coming to the conclusion that this is no longer possible at Ben & Jerry’s means I can no longer remain part of Ben & Jerry’s,” Greenfield concluded. “If I can’t carry those values forward inside the company today, then I will carry them forward outside, with all the love and conviction I can.”
As Florida transportations continue a literal erasure of rainbow street art, local governments and businesses are seeking new ways to honor the LGBTQ+ population.
In Delray Beach, where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration sandblasted an intersection after city officials refused to remove it themselves, City Commissioners this week brainstormed new tributes. According to a local CBS affiliate, that could include establishing an entire Pride Street, putting up murals on a city parking garage, or adding light projects on a water tower.
In Orlando, where the DeSantis administration started his battle against street art by blacking out a crosswalk honoring victims of the Pulse shooting and arrestingpeople who chalked colors back in, private businesses have already started replacing the lost rainbows.
The Se7enBites restaurant just hosted a “Parking Spaces for Pride” opening 49 spots in its lot, one for each victim of the Pulse shooting, to be painted in tribute instead, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Some spaces ended up with rainbow motifs, while others bear messages like “Color the World Kind.”
That came after MojoMan Swimwear, an LGBTQ-owned business in Orlando, painted the area in front of its business with a large progress pride flag. Out Florida Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith spotlighted the new mural in a social media video earlier this month.
“We are not going to be erased as the LGBTQ+ community,” MojoMan founder Lane Blackwell said in the video. “I wanted to show my support as a gay business that is gay-owned and operated.”
In Gainesville, rainbow murals popped up across the city after local rainbow crosswalks were removed, according to The Independent Florida Alligator. That has included a number of murals painted, often in the dead of night, by University of Florida students at the Norman Tunnel on campus, though competing groups have sometimes come in and painted over those works with fraternity letters or pro-Donald Trump messages.
In Sarasota, The Harvest, an LGBTQ-inclusive church, painted rainbow crosswalks on its own private property, according to Patch. That church is led by Pastor Dan Minor, who attended high school with Pulse victim Eddie Sotomayor.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first crosswalk they painted over was at the Pulse Memorial,” he told the outlet. The church, he said, felt compelled to respond to the state action.
The DeSantis administration began removing rainbow murals following directionfrom Transportation Secretary and former The Real World cast member Sean Duffy. After first focusing on rainbow mural that DeSantis criticized as political messaging, the state made clear it would remove all street art in the state.
Some municipalities have continued to fight for their local rainbow crosswalks. Fort Lauderdale has appealed a state order to scrub its streets of color, according to a local NPR station. But legal efforts have fallen short considering the state changed all of its guidance on what is permissible on public streets.
It’s not just individual companies or Pride celebrations — even journalism is starting to suffer as conservatives wage war on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Brands are becoming increasingly reluctant to sponsor or work with LGBTQ+ publications amid anti-DEI campaigns, with several prominent outlets reporting loss of support from advertisers. Mark Berryhill, CEO of equalpride, the parent company of The Advocate, Out, and Pride.com, told The Guardian that companies recently “may have been a little bit more cautious than they have been in the past.”
“We’ve tried to do a better job in this political climate of just selling the importance of our buying power,” Berryhill said. “Everybody’s cautious, and I don’t think it’s just LGBTQ. I think they’re cautious in general right now with their work with minority-owned companies.”
Tag Warner, CEO of Gay Times, revealed that the publication has lost 80 percent of its advertisers in the past year, as well as over $6.7 million in expected advertiser revenue. Executives at Amaliah, GUAP, and Stream Publishing, which publishes Attitude magazine, also reported facing hesitancy from brands recently — though it didn’t start with Donald Trump.
Even before Trump’s executive orders terminating all DEI positions in the federal government, dozens of major companies had already abandoned their practices. Many made their decisions after conservatives online specifically targeted them for their policies and threatened boycotts, with failed filmmaker turned failed congressional candidate Robby Starbuck taking credit for spearheading the movement.
Many of the companies abandoning DEI also stopped sponsoring Juneteenth and Pride events. Heritage of Pride, the organization that produces New York City’s annual Pride events, previously had five “Platinum” donors — those who had donated $175,000. This year, it has just one. Groups behind WorldPride, San Francisco Pride, Silicon Valley Pride, Oakland Pride, St. Louis Pride, Columbus Pride, Twin Cities Pride, and Toronto Pride have also reported losing sponsors.
Research suggests that companies abandoning their inclusive practices may be acting hastily. Americans are twice as likely to buy or use a brand that supports LGBTQ+ rights, according to a GLAAD survey, and those ages 18 to 34 are over five times more likely to want to work at a company if it publicly supports LGBTQ+ rights.
“The one thing that maybe this whole controversy has helped us with a little bit is to really make brands realize it’s a business decision. It’s not just a charity or something you should do because you feel guilty,” Berryhill continued. “You should do it because it’s the right thing to support LGBTQ journalism. We’re small. We need to get the word out. We have important stories to tell. But it’s also a good business decision. The more we show that side, certain brands will come along.”
But how does Google’s algorithm decide which results show up? And how do these results influence LGBTQ kids, their parents and Americans at large who are searching for help?
Uncloseted Media asked five Americans from around the country to Google five common queries related to LGBTQ identity, religion and parenting.
The results were alarming and raised an urgent question: With nearly 40% of LGBTQ youth seriously considering suicide just last year, what happens when a queer teen or the parent of a gay kid in crisis turns to Google?
Photos courtesy of participants Mark Just, Genna and Melanie Brown, April Samberg, Tommy O’Neil. Photo of Genna and Melanie by Kaoly Gutteriez.
“I’m Christian, my daughter is a lesbian,” Melanie Brown, a Southern Baptist from High Point, North Carolina, types into Google.
When Brown presses enter, Bible Bulletin Board comes up as the third result, with the suggestion of “offering hope for change,” and “lead[ing] the way to the alternative to homosexuality.” It goes on to explain that “homosexuality is contrary to God’s Word. It is sin and as always results in sin’s destructive effects on the individual and on those close to them.”
In the living room, Brown’s 15-year-old daughter Genna, with her dog on her lap, Googles “accurate information on gay kids and what to do.”
Focus on the Family (FOTF) is the first result. She clicks the link and lands on the platform of a hyper-religious organization known for promoting conversion therapy and labeling her sexuality as sinful.
The site, which presents itself as a reputable religious source, features a tab titled “Understanding Homosexuality” and a section under their resources for “Homosexuality.” It states: “[FOTF] is committed to upholding God’s design for the expression of human sexuality: a husband and wife in a marriage.”
It offers suggested reading on “redemption” from a gay lifestyle, along with 11 counseling resources aimed at changing sexual orientation, including The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, which guarantees “professional assistance … for persons who experience unwanted homosexual attractions.”
The language is intentionally padded, which means Genna and her mom—and many of the other millions of Christian parents of queer kids—may never know that Google led them to a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group. FOTF is known for its long-standing opposition to LGBTQ rights, for spreading anti-LGBTQ disinformation and for framing homosexuality and transgender identity as sinful and disordered.
In South Boston, Virginia, Tommy O’Neil Googles, “My daughter just came out as trans and I’m a Christian.” As a father of two, he wants what’s best for his kids. According to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Google’s second result, O’Neil should recognize that God doesn’t make mistakes when assigning sex and give sympathy for those who are indoctrinated in the “transgender cult.”
Thousands of miles away in Anchorage, Alaska, 38-year-old bisexual woman April Samberg Googles, “I am bisexual and have a husband who is Christian, am I going to hell?”
The third result is once again an article by FOTF that tells April that “same-sex-attracted strugglers” and “transgender and homosexual lust and behavior are wrong.”
In Cincinnati, 44-year-old Mark Just Googles, “accurate information on homosexual kids and what to do.” FOTF is the top search result.
“I don’t feel good about it,” Just told Uncloseted Media. “It’s disturbing because if there are people out there who want to accept and understand their children or loved ones, this is what they’re being pointed to.”
“[I feel] fear for the queer kids with Christian parents who will be seeing that and thinking it’s good advice, and sorrow for the kids with parents who already have,” says Genna Brown, who was a “self-loathing, suicidal kid” who thought God would punish her for being gay before she came out to her now accepting parents. “It’s pretty awful that this is what’s being pushed for advice. This has no doubt harmed people.”
Uncloseted Media also asked folks in Taiwan, Lebanon, China, Hong Kong, Canada and India to Google similar queries. All of them had FOTF turn up as a top search result.
Google, like other search engines, compiles information and directs users to various websites by referencing the titles of web pages that it judges to be most reflective of what was searched.
“Google’s algorithm is notoriously a black box,” says Jesse Ringer, founder of Method and Metric, a search engine optimization (SEO) growth company. “That’s intentional to keep their competitive advantage.”
What we do know is that Google ranks search results by first crawling the web with an automated program called “spiders” to follow links from page to page and collect data.
It uses text matching to identify documents that it thinks are relevant to a query and then ranks them based on a combination of popularity, freshness, location and previous links clicked.
But for people searching for reliable information, its process can be problematic.
“Google doesn’t rank based on accuracy, but on popularity and query matching,” says Dirk Lewandowski, professor of information research and retrieval at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. “This is based on clicks and a network of how many other links are directed to this website. … Of course, users click what is shown in the first position. So we have kind of a rich get richer.”
How to Get a High Ranking
As websites with the highest rankings continue to receive more clicks, websites like FOTF can also employ other tactics to keep their prominent placement.
Backlinking—the process of having other web pages hyperlink back to your site—is one of the ways to maintain your high ranking.
“Backlinks are a big part of popularity. So the relationship between other websites linking to this source is a big part of Google’s algorithm,” says Ringer. “There are SEO businesses that build link farms so that the content of their clients can go higher. They create a network effect and they link to each other. It is not unreasonable to think that [FOTF] has hired either an SEO person or they’ve hired an external agency to contribute to that.”
According to Francesca Tripodi, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, ranking can also be gamed by matching keywords to content. Tripodi looked at the metadata of progressive and conservative companies and found that conservative content creators “are much better at doing this.”
“They are savvy at creating new sets of words and tagging their content with them,” she says. “That’s not something I’m seeing with progressive content creators.”
Tripodi says that not only does conservatism thrive online, it might be the only perspective returned.
“They are well-funded companies with large production budgets and effective digital marketing teams,” she wrote in a 2019 testimony about conservatism and Google searches. “This is why when you search for liberal phrases like ‘gender identity’ or ‘social justice’ the top returns … are conservative content creators.”
Google declined to speak on record with Uncloseted Media for this story.
In an email, a spokesperson said: “Like any search engine, Google indexes the content that’s available on the open web, relying on systems like keyword matching to surface relevant results. We are largely guided by local law when it comes to removing pages from search results.”
What If It’s Harmful or Illegal?
The United States notoriously protects harmful or misleading content—including anti-LGBTQ hate speech—under the First Amendment.
“The situation in [other countries] is a bit different than in America,” Lewandowski says. “For instance, Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. So Google bans these sites, but they don’t ban them in the U.S.”
Section 230 of the U.S. law protects Americans’ freedom of expression online by implying that we should all be responsible for our own actions and statements on the internet. This law largely takes legal pressure off of Google.
And in 2003, an Oklahoma court ruled that Google’s rankings are subjective opinions and thus constitutionally protected.
Google’s policies for tamping down on harmful content “don’t apply to web results.” Thus, there is little moderation on the web pages that pop up for Americans who use the search engine.
The spokesperson for Google says that “[they] hold themselves to a high standard when it comes to legal requirements to remove pages from Google search results” and that “they don’t remove web results except for child sexual abuse, highly personal information, spam, site owner requests, and valid legal requests.”
But according to the company, “determining whether content is illegal is not always a determination that Google is equipped to make.”
Tripodi says this might be why groups like FOTF are still showing up, even though conversion therapy is illegal in 23 states. She says these groups may have found a loophole in Google’s policy by “tricking” the search engine into thinking they are providing “resources” and not simply a recommendation for conversion therapy.
“Google has a responsibility for what is coming up in their results because people trust [them],” says Lewandowski. “They think something is correct or accurate because it is number one in Google.”
Fifteen-year-old Genna Brown is one of the 85% of Americans who feel this way, according to a 2025 study.
“Isn’t the first result typically ranked most credible?” she says. “Because I typically trust the first result more.”
“It’s pretty concerning what comes up when you search for these things,” Ringer says. “There needs to be more done to educate the people who are doing the searches on understanding news and information.”
But vulnerable groups, like LGBTQ kids who are living in households where they are told they are going to hell and parents who are often confused and in crisis themselves, are being led by Google’s algorithm to believe that being queer is wrong.
“1000% yes, these results concern me,” says Genna Brown. “We’re talking about organizations that promote practices like conversion therapy, which is insane. … I wish there was some disclaimer. Like, ‘Google has determined this to be a subjective query. As such, we can’t verify the following results. Proceed with caution.’”
Tripodi says she thinks consumers are responsible for about 20% of the burden by researching and verifying the sources they learn from. But she agrees with Brown in that Google carries an ethical responsibility for the content it chooses to rank and promote.
“As a global corporation that gobbles up all other possibilities for information, Google has a responsibility to ensure that its content is accurate and not harmful,” Tripodi says. “[It’s their job] to ensure that the information that they surface is accurate and reliable because we know people trust that information.”
Uncloseted Media reached out to Focus on the Family, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Bible Bulletin Board. They did not respond to our request for comment.
Additional reporting by Sophie Holland and Spencer Macnaughton.
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Sawyer Hemsley, founder of Crumbl Cookies who serves as the company’s Chief Branding Officer, came out as gay late Monday night after various videos and social media threads publicly discussed his sexuality based on the entrepreneur’s online presence.
Hemsley wrote in an Instagram post shared on Monday, August 25:
“Over the past little while, there have been people online trying to define me, twist things, and share conversations in ways that feel harmful. Instead of letting others write my story, I want to share it in my own words.
The truth is, over the past few years I’ve come to understand and accept that I’m gay. It’s taken me a long time to really process this part of myself and even longer to feel comfortable enough to say it out loud. For most of my life, I didn’t have the clarity to answer the questions or respond to the rumors. Coming to terms with it has been overwhelming and, at times, scary — but it has also brought me peace, joy, and authenticity that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I grew up with values and beliefs that I still deeply love and respect, which made this journey more complicated. But I remain grateful for my foundation, even as I’ve worked to embrace this truth about myself.
I know some people may have questions or even judgments, but my hope is that kindness, empathy, and love will lead the way. I’ve learned so much through this process — about strength, compassion, and the importance of living authentically.
Hemsley concluded the post writing, “At the end of the day, I’m deeply thankful: for the opportunities I’ve had, for the people who support me, and for the chance to live and share my story. It’s a journey of growth and honesty, and one I’ll never stop being grateful for.”
A feature published on the Utah State Magazine wrote about Hemsley’s upbringing as a Mormon.
“Growing up in Southeastern Idaho, Sawyer Hemsley served as the student body president at Preston High School. He got involved in student politics again at Utah State after serving a mission in Mexico for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but following a stint as student events vice president, Hemsley took an even bigger swing and ran for student body president in the spring of 2017.”
Hemsley cofounded Crumbl Cookies alongside Jason McGowan in 2017 and opened the company’s first store in Logan, Utah. Since then, Crumbl has grown to have “more than 1,000 locations across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada,” The New York Times reports.
Crumbl also has a huge social media following that includes 10.6 million followers (along with 98.9 million likes) on TikTok, 6.3 million followers on Instagram, 3.9 million followers on Facebook, and nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube.
Conservatives are threatening boycotts of Cracker Barrel after the company swapped its rustic logo for a cleaner design, accusing the chain of betraying its “middle-American values.” But LGBTQ+ historians say the uproar ignores a deeper irony: Just three decades ago, the Tennessee-founded restaurant was notorious for firing queer employees and became the target of one of the country’s longest-running equality battles.
The chain, famous for its biscuits, rocking chairs, and Southern nostalgia, introduced a new logo last week, retiring the mustached man leaning against a barrel in favor of a simplified yellow-outlined wordmark. The update was part of a $700 million rebrand meant to freshen stores and attract younger diners. Instead, it triggered a stock dip and a wave of backlash from conservatives who claim the company has abandoned its roots.
Far-right activist Robby Starbuck, who has had success targeting brands he deems too “woke” by calling for boycotts, described the redesign as proof of cultural betrayal. Over the weekend, Starbuck said on his web series that Cracker Barrel had shifted from “old American nostalgia to cold, dead, lifeless, and modern.” He mocked the change, adding that a friend asked what remained after removing “the cracker and the barrel,” and he answered, “nothingness, the same nothingness that the left wants you to stomach in every other facet of your life.” Starbuck then argued that Cracker Barrel was “infested with left-wing activists who are more interested in safe spaces, pronouns, and virtue signaling than they are in their customers.”
He pointed to the company’s rainbow-colored rocking chairs, its sponsorship of Nashville Pride and River City Pride in Evansville, Indiana, and its engagement with the Human Rights Campaign and Out & Equal as evidence of what he calls a betrayal of the brand’s so-called middle-American values. He concluded, “A conservative can’t give their money to Cracker Barrel. A Christian cannot give their money to Cracker Barrel, and so we won’t.”
A forgotten past
For many LGBTQ+ people, the outrage is heavy with irony. In January 1991, Cracker Barrel adopted a written policy stating that employees “whose sexual preferences fail to demonstrate normal heterosexual values” would be terminated. At least 11 workers lost their jobs, including Georgia cook Cheryl Summerville, who was handed a dismissal slip that read, “The employee is being terminated for being gay.”
Summerville’s firing made national news, landing her on Oprah and 20/20 and turning her into a reluctant face of the fight for workplace equality. Protests quickly followed, and in August 1991, about 150 demonstrators occupied nearly every table at Cracker Barrel’s flagship location in Lebanon, Tennessee, effectively shutting down Sunday brunch. Activists also took the fight to Wall Street.
But the movement soon expanded beyond protests. That December, Carl R. Owens, a member of Queer Nation Atlanta, published a letter in Southern Voiceunder the headline “Buy Cracker Barrel.” He noted that the company had fired “at least 17 people on the basis of their sexual orientation” and praised Queer Nation activists who had “formed picket lines, experienced arrest, taunts and threats of physical violence.” Owens urged individual lesbians and gays across the United States to “purchase a (one) share of Cracker Barrel Inc. stock.”
The goal, Owens wrote, was “to have thousands, hundreds of thousands of single share owners of Cracker Barrel stock“ — adding, “This will create some serious problems for the company.“ He argued that a nationwide “Buy One” campaign would send “a strong message that gays and lesbians are not going to tolerate continued discrimination,” calling it “a remarkable empowerment for our community” and “a vivid example of our presence and power.” He also suggested that once the campaign succeeded, participants could donate their shares to groups such as the Lambda Legal Defense Fund.
The proposal, though ambitious for the pre-Internet era, caught on. Along the way, it gained unexpected allies like the New York City Employees’ Retirement System and the Sisters of Mercy, a Catholic order that managed hospital endowments.And by 1993, Cracker Barrel’s shareholder base had more than doubled.
After a decade of shareholder battles, Cracker Barrel’s board amended its nondiscrimination policy in 2002 to include sexual orientation.
Amanda W. Timpson and Yesterqueers
That history has reemerged thanks to Amanda W. Timpson, a public historian and the creator of the viral project “Yesterqueers.” In a video that circulated widely on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube after Timpson posted it on Saturday, she explained that “Cracker Barrel’s decade-long journey from blatant homophobia to being the ‘front porch of Pride’ was driven by queer activists using brunch and the stock market as their weapons.”
In a Monday interview with The Advocate, Timpson said she had first researched the Cracker Barrel controversy years ago and returned to it because it connected current headlines with overlooked queer history. “One of the things that’s happening right now is people are feeling hopeless and beaten down, and the problems feel so big — especially for younger queer people who do not have the in-person community that a lot of us had growing up,” she said. ”So I think the thing that was so engaging about this video is that it was a very long fight, and it was a very unconventional fight.”
She pointed to Owens’s shareholder strategy as precisely the kind of creative activism people find compelling. “It was this one guy who looked at the problem and was, like, I think there’s another way to do this,” she said. “And one of the things I learned the first time I was researching this video is that there are a lot of funds, especially retirement and pension funds, that use their investing as a way to change the world. So the fact that the New York City ERS and the Sisters of Mercy were the first two to come on board is actually not all that surprising.”
Timpson emphasized that the fight also exposed how few protections queer workers had at the time. “Cheryl Summerville didn’t know it was legal for her to be fired for being gay until she was fired for being gay,” Timpson said. “She just assumed that was not legal — which is a reasonable assumption — but it was totally legal everywhere except Wisconsin. And we only recently got those federal protections in 2020 with [the U.S. Supreme Court case] Bostock.”
In response to some commenters accusing her of being a “Cracker Barrel apologist,” Timpson pushed back. “They’re still a mostly terrible company. They never crossed 80 on the HRC rating, and then they dropped out of being rated,” she said before turning back to why the story is still a compelling one. “But a bunch of queer activists worked together with allied activists, and they did it for a decade, and then they saw real, tangible change.”
Manufactured outrage
Regarding Starbuck’s comments on the company’s recent move, Timpson said the far-right commentator is using a familiar playbook. “I sure do wish he’d use his powers for good,” she said. “Unfortunately, he has tapped into something that works really well. He basically followed the [Focus on the Family founder James] Dobson and [televangelist Jerry] Falwell models of ‘let’s get people really riled up so that they are operating from a place of emotion and not a place of logic and reason.’ He is dangerous. He causes demonstrable, measurable harm with the things that he does.”
For Timpson, the antidote is education. “My goal with Yesterqueers is to celebrate the broadest possible expanse of queer history and to bring queer history out of the shadows,” she said. “History is humanity. You cannot be a human successfully without a sense of connection to whatever your history is.”
The Human Rights Campaign, which Starbuck repeatedly attacked in his video, dismissed the controversy. Eric Bloem, the HRC’s vice president of workplace equality, through a spokesperson, told The Advocate, “Like most things Robby Starbuck is concerned about, this is a manufactured non-issue.”
Marks & Spencer’s bra-fitting services are for designed for “biological females”, a spokesperson for the high-street store has said, following a row where a member of staff, claimed to be transgender, asked a customer if she needed help.
The 141-year-old retailer recently apologised to a mother who complained complained that an employee she believed to be trans offered to help her and her teenage daughter while in a store.
The mother claimed the member of staff was a “biological male”, according to The Telegraph, causing her daughter to be “visibly upset” and “freaked out”. She added that it was “obviously the case” that the employee was transgender because they were “at least 6ft 2in” tall.
A customer service spokesperson said M&S was “truly sorry” for the “distress” and assured the mother and 14-year-old daughter that they would “receive assistance from a female colleague”. The employee does not carry out bra fittings but works in the clothing section, and so offering to help was part of their job, they added.
JK Rowling responded by calling for a boycott of M&S, seemingly forgetting that there was already meant to be one after campaigners complained that the retailers use of the phrase “First bras for fearless young things” in an advert last year erased women.
The M&S apology sparked complaints. (Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Meanwhile, the apology led a number of customers to complain and hundreds signed an open letter saying the complaint “should never have been legitimised, let alone publicised and appeased.”
It continued: “By doing so, M&S has not only failed to support its employee but has [also] inadvertently signalled that discriminatory views will be entertained – if not validated – under the guise of customer feedback.”
The retailer has since now issued a statement to clarify the situation.
“Our bra-fitting service has been developed for our female customers and all our bra fitters are female,” a spokesperson told The Scottish Sun. That meant “biological females”, they said.
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The controversy came in the wake of the UK Supreme Court ruling that the protected characteristic of “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act did not include trans people.
In the days that followed the judgement, the Equality and Human Rights Commission issued draft guidance calling for service providers to bar trans men and women from single-sex services and facilities.
It was later clarified that the “circumstances” were where “reasonable objection” could be taken to a trans person’s presence, including – such as in the case of female spaces – when “the gender reassignment process has given [a trans man] a masculine appearance or attributes”.
A leaked version of the EHRC’s finalised guidance, published by The Times last week, is said to be not too dissimilar to the draft guidelines and will ban trans people from changing rooms, wards and sporting competitions, as well as other spaces and services.
Speaking to The Scottish Sun, Fiona McAnena, campaign director of gender-critical group Sex Matters, called on M&S to “rethink its priorities and remember that women and girls have rights too”, adding: “Retailers that meet one group’s demands for special treatment without considering the impact on others are going to get into this sort of tangle.
“No matter how well-intentioned, policies built on the falsehood that ‘trans women are women’ inevitably compromise other people’s rights. Single-sex spaces become mixed sex as soon as a trans-identifying man is allowed to access a women’s toilet or changing room.”
Meanwhile, Virgin Active recently announced that its changing and bathroom facilities will be divided according to “biological sex”.
Back in the day, August was considered a no-man’s land, with “out of office” email replies the norm. But that’s no longer the case. This week Trump militarized Washington, D.C., hijacked the Kennedy Center Honors, and pompously flew to Alaska thinking he can outsmart Vladimir Putin.
And amidst all this, came the news that was almost too absurd to process: Mark Zuckerberg has decided to bring the insidious Robby Starbuck on board as an “AI advisor” to Meta. The last time I checked, Starbuck didn’t have a computer science or information technology degree.
In fact, after graduating high school at 16, and dropping out of community college, he went into video production. I know a software engineer at Facebook with two degrees and masters. When I asked what he thinks Starbuck would do, he wrote back, “Beats me.”
More recently, Starbuck has built a career in fueling outrage, dismantling diversity programs, and trying to crest the wave of a MAGA base that swims in DEI revulsion. Stupefying as it is, he now has a formal role at one of the most powerful tech companies on Earth.
The move stems from a lawsuit Starbuck filed against Meta, which the company chose to settle. If you read the news, I don’t think anyone goes to court anymore, at least when it comes to standing up for what is right. And it’s hard to root for a winner when the match is Zuckerberg vs. Starbuck.
But instead of ending the relationship there, Zuckerberg gave Starbuck a cushy seat at the table. That’s not just distasteful judgment. It’s an alliance that assures that META continues on its progression of moving itself to the narrow-minded silos of the far right.
I dare say that if Zuckerberg would have chosen Tucker Carlson for instance, it would have elicited less shock, and would have been a step down in terms of going full-throttle to the right. He went right to the top of the snake by snatching Starbuck.
I mean, why else would Zuckerberg make such a deal? It’s his latest attempt to curry favor with Donald Trump and the MAGA crowd. His transformation from the geeky critic to Trump’s social media sidekick is now out in the open. Remember, with Elon Musk, Trump never mentioned X, because that’s Truth Social’s competitor, although both sound eerily similar. .
Last year, after Trump was elected again, Zuckerberg wrote a $1 million check for the inauguration, and made sure he was there in person sitting right behind the stone-faced Melania.
Since then, Zuckerberg has been diligently working to ensure the new dictator-in-chief doesn’t disrupt his fortune, his empire, his tariffs, his tax breaks, etc.
This has nothing to do with ideology. It’s all about power and money. Always has been, always will be. I say it all the time. You have two greedy billionaires, Trump and Zuckerberg, locked in a mutually beneficial hug, where influence is about the moola, and where public good is irrelevant and can go to hell.
Starbuck began, in baseball parlance, as a minor-leaguer, and not in the AAA. We’re talking a single-A player here. He was a lowly filmmaker (Nothing wrong with that!) before discovering that screaming about “wokeness” was a faster path to being famous.
He sort of has the “Balloon Boy” mentality. He does stupid, mean, outrageous and thoughtless things, and wallows in the attention.
In recent years, he’s made himself a valuable tool (Fool?) of the far right by targeting brands and companies with diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. These spineless, useless companies have folded so far, partly due to Starbuck’s yammering.
With Trump back in power, Starbuck has been hammering and pressuring corporate America to ditch DEI entirely, and bragging about how he’s dismantling workplace protections and representation for marginalized groups.
Oh, the thrill in making people feel small, unwelcomed, and discriminated against.
Starbuck’s anti-LGBTQ+ record is merciless and ruthless. He rails against Pride celebrations, smears trans people, and cheers efforts to strip away marriage equality. His rhetoric is dehumanizing, and now Meta has given him the keys to influence its AI policies.
Like everything else, there’s a silver-ling. For white, straight men who see social media as their playground for homophobic, xenophobic, and misogynist hate, this is fantastic news. Under Starbuck’s influence, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are now poised to become even more nonrestrictive toward the kinds of vile language that drives users out and ushers abusers in.
For these narrow-minded agitators, the Zuckerberg – Starbuck partnership is a green light.
Starbuck’s rise has been fueled not by some kind of talent, but by fear, deceit and hate. Brands avoid his wrath because they’ve seen what happens when he makes them a target. Is he taking his lessons from Trump? Lambast a company or CEO on social media, and watch them quaver into submission?
It’s corporate blackmail masquerading as militance, and it works because companies like Meta care more about stock prices, investors and the bottom line than they do about truth or safety. Or, God forbid, not making anyone feel excluded.
Now, with Zuckerberg’s blessing, Starbuck’s reach will expand exponentially. His grievances and putrid pontifications will be laundered and burnished through the legitimacy of Silicon Valley.
Advising on AI? Hardly! He will be embedding his ideology into algorithms, moderation decisions, and content policies. AI isn’t just some fancy code. It’s the architecture of the future, and it will shape public opinion and the public square in ways we can’t even imagine. And Starbuck will be tinkering with it to meet his specifications.
Earlier this year, Meta loosened its fact-checking policies, letting misinformation flow more freely. What a wondrous achievement for Zuckerberg. At the time, it looked like another play for the affections of the far right. Now, it’s clear it was all building up to this moment where Meta openly embraces professional liars as partners.
Like Trump, Starbuck treats truth sacrilegiously. His smears are always intentional. And now Meta, with billions of users, has given this big mouth a global mouthpiece.
For Zuckerberg, this signals his fealty to Trump’s and his base while insulating himself from MAGA retribution. For Starbuck, it’s a license to build his culture war from the fringes to the digital infrastructure that shapes public opinion.
Zuckerberg and Starbuck are grooming Facebook, Instagram, and Threads into platforms designed for MAGA loyalists and narrow minds. Soon it will be a place where white straight men set the tone, people of color are sidelined, women are silenced, and the LGBTQ+ community is erased and harassed.
At one time, Zuckerberg wanted to build a town square of open dialogue that connected people. Well, now he’s fashioning a digital echo chamber especially for bigotry.
A cisgender teenage girl from Minnesota has filed a gender discrimination case against a Buffalo Wild Wings location after a server reportedly followed her into the bathroom and made her prove she is not transgender.
Gerika Mudra, an 18-year-old high school student who is biracial and a lesbian, was out to dinner with a friend at the restaurant chain’s Owatonna branch in April when the incident occurred. She recounted how the two sensed hostility from the staff from the moment they arrived, saying in a video posted by local advocacy organization Gender Justice that their server was “rude” and “giving us dirty looks.”
Their server largely ignored them, Mudra said, until she left the table to use the bathroom. That’s when the employee followed her in, pounded on her stall door, and proclaimed, “This is a women’s restroom. The man needs to get out of here.” Mudra said that she told the server “I am a lady,” but the worker still insisted “You have to get out now.”
Cornered and alone, Mudra said that she was forced to unzip her sweatshirt and show the server her clothed breasts to prove her gender. The server didn’t say anything else, then left the restroom.
“This wasn’t the first time something like this happened, but this is the worst time,” Mudra said. “Because other people — they just say, like, ‘This is a girl’s restroom’ and they just go on about their day. But this one kept it going. She was mad screaming. She made me feel very uncomfortable. Now after that I just don’t like going in public bathrooms. I just hold it in. And now I just think, like, ‘Oh I’m going to get harassed. I’m going to keep getting harassed like this.'”
Gender Justice has filed a charge of discrimination on behalf of Mudra with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights (MDHR), the body that enforces the state’s Human Rights Act. Though Mudra is not trans, she would still have a gender discrimination case if she was — Minnesota is one of 21 states that legally protect trans people’s right to use the facilities that correspond with their gender identity.
While no criminal charges have been filed, and it is unclear if any will be, the events as described by Mudra could fall under the legal definitions of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and false imprisonment. Megan Peterson, executive director at Gender Justice, said that the confrontation could have also led to further violence.
“This kind of gender policing is, unfortunately, nothing new. And yet, in our current climate we have to ask: What if Gerika had been a trans person?” Peterson said in a statement. “Would this story have ended differently? That’s the terrifying reality too many trans people live with every day.”
“Gerika’s story sits at the intersection of anti-LGBTQ+ panic, racism, and rigid gender norms and stereotypes,” Peterson continued. “A growing culture of suspicion and control is targeting trans, gender-nonconforming, and Black girls and women—anyone who doesn’t match narrow ideas of how women should look or behave. When people are harassed just for existing, none of us are truly safe.”
Nearly one-third of LGBTQ+ people reported experiencing harassment for using a bathroom in a 2017 survey by the Harvard Opinion Research Program (HORP), as noted by Gender Justice. About 60 percent of trans people said in a separate study from Trans Equality that they avoid using public restrooms out of fear for their safety.
“I just want like people to know they’re not alone,” Mudra said. “Like they’re not the only people this happens to. It’s okay to stick up for themselves and be okay with who they are.”