The U.S. Education Department said Thursday that Denver Public Schools violated Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination in education by creating all-gender bathrooms and allowing students to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.
The finding followed an unprecedented probe of Denver’s East High School that marked a sharp departure from the department’s investigations under former Democratic President Joe Biden. It’s part of a push by President Donald Trump’s Republican administration against local and state policies that make allowances for transgender students.
The investigation in Denver began after the school district converted a girl’s restroom into an all-gender restroom while leaving another bathroom on the same floor exclusive to boys in January. The school district has said that was done as a result of a student-led process and the bathroom had 12-foot (3.6-meter) tall partitions for privacy and security.
The school district later added a second all-gender restroom on the same floor which it said was meant to address concerns of unfairness. At the time it said that students would also continue to have access to gender-specific restrooms and single-stall, all-gender bathrooms.
The Education Department said it offered the school district a chance to voluntarily make changes, including converting multi-stall, all-gender bathrooms back to ones designated by gender, within 10 days or risk unspecified enforcement action.
It also wants the district to use biology-based definitions for the words “male” and “female” in all policies and practices related to Title IX and to rescind any policies or guidance allowing students to use bathrooms based on their gender identity rather than their biological sex.
“Denver is free to endorse a self-defeating gender ideology, but it is not free to accept federal taxpayer funds and harm its students in violation of Title IX,” Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of the department’s Office for Civil Rights, said in a news release.
Denver Public Schools officials said they had received the results of the investigation and were “determining our next steps.”
The Trump administration has launched about two dozen investigations of transgender policies in schools, including access to sports, locker rooms and bathrooms, according to data compiled by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news organization. Roughly half of the investigations focus at least in part on who gets to use bathrooms in some K-12 school districts in Virginia, Kansas, Washington state and Colorado.
Trump signed an executive order in February to block trans girls from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Supporters said the move restored fairness in athletic competitions, but opponents called it an attack on transgender youth.
Federal officials in June determined that California’s Department of Education violated civil rights law by allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams. Officials under Trump also have sued Maine over the participation of transgender athletes in girl’s sports and last month launched an investigation into Oregon’s Department of Education, following a complaint from a conservative group about transgender girls on girls sports teams.
Earlier this year, TikToker Kathryn Jones began a quest to visit every exhibit at the Smithsonian museums and read every plaque.Justine Goode / NBC News; Getty Images
Pausing next to a hulking steam locomotive at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on Friday, Kathryn Jones bent down to look at a tiny silk slipper.
“I’ve never seen one in person. It’s so small,” she said, pointing at the shoe once worn by a Chinese immigrant with bound feet. “That’s why I love museums. It takes those facts and solidifies it.”
The recording of a trail whistle hooted in the background, bringing to life the 1887 Jupiter steam engine that hauled fruit picked by immigrants in Watsonville, California.
“The immersion, the sounds, the small little touches that suck you in. I’m a sucker for small objects,” she said as she walked through “America on the Move,” her 100th Smithsonian exhibit this year.
In January, Jones began a quest to visit every exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution museums in Washington, D.C., and read every plaque. During the past eight months, she has visited 100 exhibits at 13 museums, meticulously logging her time on detailed spreadsheets. According to her records, that’s 73 hours inside the museums and almost 51 total hours reading signs.
She traverses each exhibit twice, first reading every description and watching every video, then looking at the exhibit again and filming video for her TikTok account.
Kathryn Jones visits the “America on the Move” exhibit at the National Museum of American History Behring Center.Fiona Glisson / NBC News
“My goal for that is almost to kind of provide a marketing sizzle reel for the exhibit,” she said. “A priority of mine is getting people in museums, getting people curious, reminding people that learning is fun as well as hopefully right, breaking down the stigma that museums and galleries are stuffy and exclusive and people can’t come.”
Jones paused to take in historic footage of a streetcar passing the White House. “This is what I love to see, D.C. streets which I recognize,” she said. “Look how close to the White House they are with a streetcar.”
She added, “People on roller skates! I did not expect that. A tour! This is so cool.”
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on April 3, 2019.Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP file
This year, Jones found herself at a professional crossroads after leaving her job as a vice president of marketing.
“I called it my grown-up gap year,” she said. “There were so many aspects of what I was doing that I loved, but I was just kind of burnt out and felt adrift. So, I took the year off with the intention to figure out what brought me joy in life, what I wanted to do.”
Making videos about the Smithsonian, she discovered a passion for content creation, which she intends to continue after filming her last Smithsonian exhibition.
“I tried, I think, three times and failed before I did my first exhibit. I went to a museum with the intention to read everything, and was either too anxious to do it, embarrassed to be filming in public,” she said. “I’m really proud of myself for the strides that I’ve made in my ability to focus, my confidence in myself.”
As Jones has built her channel, the Smithsonian has found itself under increased scrutiny. Last month, the Trump administration informed Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch that it would begin a systematic review to “remove divisive or partisan narratives” in advance of the nation’s 250th anniversary.
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” he wrote. “We are not going to allow this to happen.”
The first phase of the review will focus on eight Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Portrait Gallery.
In an interview with Fox News, Lindsey Halligan, one of the White House officials who signed the administration’s Aug. 12 letter to the Smithsonian, addressed the review.
“The fact that … our country was involved in slavery is awful — no one thinks otherwise,” she said. “But what I saw when I was going through the museums, personally, was an overemphasis on slavery, and I think there should be more of an overemphasis on how far we’ve come since slavery.”
A display featuring former slave Clara Brown at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
The Smithsonian Institution was in the administration’s crosshairs prior to last month’s review announcement. In March, Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which directed the institution to “prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
In April, an exhibit by African LGBTQ artists was abruptly postponed by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. The following month, NBC News documented more than 30 artifacts that were removed from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. And in July, artist Amy Sherald canceled an upcoming show at the National Portrait Gallery after she said curators expressed concerns about a painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty.
“It became clear during my exchanges with the gallery how quickly curatorial independence collapses when politics enters the room,” she wrote on MSNBC.com. “Museums are not stages for loyalty. They are civic laboratories. They are places where we wrestle with contradictions, encounter the unfamiliar and widen our circle of empathy. But only if they remain free.”
This is not the first time that the Smithsonian has found itself in the crossfire of a culture war. In 2010, the institution withdrew part of an exhibition called Hide/Seek featuring works by LGBTQ artists after sustained outcry by then-House Speaker John Boehner and Catholic organizations.
The institution was also roiled by a debate over a National Air and Space Museum exhibit of the Enola Gay aircraft, which dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II. Critics derided plans to include Japanese perspectives and information about the effects of nuclear warfare as an example of “politically correct curating.”
“The Smithsonian has faced crisis moments in the past … but the crisis moments have never come from a direct political assault, certainly not at the hands of the executive,” said Dr. Sam Redman, director of the public history program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “I know we use the word unprecedented a lot in this era, but this is truly unprecedented in terms of thinking about the Smithsonian.”
Kathryn Jones reads a plaque about Charlotte Hawkins Brown, an author, educator, and civil rights activist.Fiona Glisson / NBC News
Some museum scholars dispute the Trump administration’s claims that the Smithsonian overemphasizes narratives by Black and LGBTQ artists.
“We all know that museums are historically and culturally extremely conservative, and that there’s a striking lack of exhibitions devoted to women artists, or women’s history or Black artists or LGBTQ,” said Lisa Strong, director of the art and museum studies master’s program at Georgetown University. “Museums know this and have been working, working to fix this.”
A 2022 report by journalists Julia Halperin and Charlotte Burns for Artnet found 14.9% of exhibits at 31 major U.S. museums, including the National Portrait Gallery, between 2008 and 2020 were of work by female-identifying artists, and 6.3 % were of work by Black American artists.
Jones said her priority on her TikTok channel is encouraging people to visit the Smithsonian museums and local museums that document history.
“Hearing those stories of people that have suffered before, problems that we face, that’s honestly why I kind of started doing this challenge,” she said. “Because when we read these stories and see things, the more we know, the better we can empathize with other people, because we have other experiences to pull from.”
She sat in the arched alcove of a railroad waiting room to listen to the story of Charlotte Hawkins Brown, who traveled to the Jim Crow South on racially segregated railroad cars during the 1920s.
“She talks about how someone said to her, ‘This is God’s country. You can’t sit there,’” Jones said.
“Hearing those stories, I do think it’s important to confront those things, because that led to where we are now,” she said. “People are affected by that. Some people will carry the scars of that.”
As part of a wider rollback on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives (DEI), the Ivy League university will no longer designate residential proctors or tutors specifically for LGBTQ+ or first-generation/low-income undergraduates, according to the college newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.
The tutors and proctors will have their tasks folded into “specialty” roles. The change was reportedly announced last week in an email from associate dean of students Lauren Brandt.
Proctors and tutors are live-in advisers who support and help plan activities for students in their first year at Harvard.
A document included with Brandt’s email informed students that “Culture and Community” proctors and tutors would now work to “foster cultivation of bonds and bridges to enable all members of our community to grow with and learn from each other”, The Crimson reported.
“The description of the responsibilities of the… tutors does not mention providing support to students with specific backgrounds or identities,” the report went on to say.
A 21-year-old trans woman, Ciara Watkin, has been found guilty of sexual assault after a court heard she did not tell the man she was dating that she was not assigned female at birth.
The BBC reports that Ciara Watkin told the man she was on her period to stop him finding out she had not yet had gender confirmation surgery. The court heard that she had identified as female and used the name Ciara since the age of 13.
Prosecutors argued that the man was unable to make “informed consent”, after he claimed he wouldn’t have had sexual contact with Watkin had he known she was trans.
When Watkin later revealed that information, the man filed a complaint with police telling officers had he known, he would not have met her as he did “not swing that way”.
The jury reached a guilty verdict after just one hour of deliberations following a two-day trial. She will be sentenced on 10 October and was ordered to sign the sex offenders register within three days.
Updated Crown Prosecution Service “deception as to sex” guidance
Ciara Watkin’s conviction comes in the wake of a recent update to the Crown Prosecution Service’s “deception as to sex”, previously “deception as to gender”, guidance.
The “deception as to gender” guidance initially arose following the case of McNally v R. [2013] EWCA Crim 1051 when the Court determined that “depending on the circumstances, deception as to gender can vitiate consent”.
In 2013, Justine McNally, 18, entered an online relationship with another young woman, using the name Scott McNally. When they met in person McNally continued to present as Scott and they engaged in sexual activity. She was convicted of six counts of assault by penetration.
Policy Exchange is a British think tank based in London described as “highly influential” by OpenDemocracy. However, the sources of its £3,951,594 annual funding are unclear. Policy Exchange was rated as “highly opaque” in a 2016 report, noting that it is one of only a “handful of think tanks that refuse to reveal even the identities of their donors.”
The CPS said that they received 409 responses to the 2022 consultation in total, including from “gender critical stakeholders, women’s rights groups and lesbian and gay persons.” They stated: “We have given careful consideration to all of the responses received and have made significant revisions to the final version of the guidance.”
The CPS subsequently changed the wording of the guidance to “deception as to sex” instead of “deception as to gender” and clarified that the guidance applies to suspects who are trans and non-binary.
In their summary of the changes, CPS also note: “We have clarified that there is no onus or responsibility on a complainant to confirm or discover the sex or gender identity of the suspect, and we have made extensive revisions to the factors to consider in relation to whether the complainant was deceived.”
The current presidential administration is slashing the lifesaving PEPFAR program for HIV relief, despite earlier public assurances to lawmakers and advocates that funding for the program was secure.
Funding will be cut by half for both this and next year’s federal budgets, before he shuts down the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) completely, according to members of the program’s staff as well as budget documents viewed by The New York Times.
PEPFAR has saved an estimated 26 million lives since it was introduced by President George W. Bush in 2003.
The massive cuts come after PEPFAR’s supporters were lulled into thinking that the program was secure. Last July, the White House relented and restored $400 million in cuts to the program.
That fight, in the face of bipartisan Senate opposition, was a distraction, according to staff members who work for PEPFAR, because they’ve been repeatedly told by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that the program would be receiving less than half of the $6 billion appropriated by Congress for the 2025 fiscal year — even after the $400 million was officially restored.
But even that money hasn’t been restored, according to a federal budget tracking website that was disappeared by the presidential administration in January and restored by court order just last week.
Failure by OMB Director Russell Vought to appropriate the money is a de facto spending cut, according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who serves as vice chair of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee.
“Even after promising Republican lawmakers that the program would be protected, Russ Vought has choked off a huge chunk of funding provided by Congress for PEPFAR,” she said. “And he’s managed to hide this cut from lawmakers and the public until now because he took down a key spending transparency website.”
According to PEPFAR staff, they were told that the program would be given a maximum amount of $2.9 billion out of the original $6 billion commitment to the program. PEPFAR staff were told that they should make plans with implementing partners around the globe accordingly. Those staffers spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
Further dilution of PEPFAR’s mission, mandated by Congress to cover HIV prevention alone, is occurring alongside budgetary cutbacks for preventing other diseases worldwide. Funds are being cut for “Global Health security, Tuberculosis, Malaria, and Polio eradication and prevention,” according to an OMB document.
The massive funding cuts coincide with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s plan to shut PEPFAR down completely, cutting some countries off within just two years, and shuttering the entire program within eight.
Observers have said that the cuts will worsen HIV epidemics abroad, destabilizing African regions, and making them more susceptible to warlords and other national security risks.
Ottawa’s Pride parade ground to a halt on Sunday afternoon when Queers4Palestine protesters blocked the route and demanded to negotiate with parade organizers over their stance on the war in Gaza.
After nearly an hour of talks, and with the route still blocked, the two sides failed to reach an accommodation. Capital Pride, the event’s organizers, decided to cancel the remainder of the march.
“We are bummed, of course, but we had a blast for the block and a half that we walked,” said Stefania Wheelhouse, who marched in the short-lived parade with a local theater company.
“We sang, we spread the word,” she told the Ottawa Citizen. “Everyone was so positive, so it was still a net win for us,” Wheelhouse said.
The atmosphere was less positive for parade and protest leaders, who tried and failed to come to terms over Israel’s continuing occupation of Gaza in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, and Capital Pride’s response.
Last year, the group was resolute in its support of Palestinians, issuing a letter that condemned both the “acts of terrorism” committed on October 7 by Hamas and Israel’s “endless and brutal campaign in Gaza,” which the letter said had caused the deaths of “innocent Palestinians.”
The Jewish Federation of Ottawa called the 2024 statement “antisemitic” and vowed to boycott last summer’s Pride parade in response. Other groups, and Ottawa’s mayor, Mark Sutcliffe, withdrew their support and sponsorship as well.
This year, that statement quietly disappeared from Capital Pride’s website.
“This is what a village looks like!” the pro-Palestinian protesters chanted from Parliament Hill in the Canadian capital, a reference to this year’s “We Are a Village” parade theme. The parade ground to a halt there, Q4P said, with the ascent of Grand Marshall Patience Plush.
Protesters unfurled Palestinian flags and a giant pink-and-black banner that read “All of us or none of us” and “Stonewall was an intifada.” Many signs read, “No pride in genocide.”
Demonstrators also chanted slogans including “Free, free Palestine!” “Long live the intifada!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
Queers4Palestine issued several demands of Capital Pride, including a commitment to join the long-running boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
They also demanded that Mayor Sutcliffe and other elected officials publicly apologize for the 2024 boycott of Capital Pride and called on them to “stand with us and all oppressed peoples, including Palestinians.”
“We are in the parade today to affirm very clearly that our Pride is not for sale, and that 2SLGBTQIA+ communities will not accept sponsors and elected officials dictating what we stand for, how we celebrate ourselves, and how we claim our space,” a press release from the group said.
“CP had multiple discussions with those who boycotted over the last year, not with Q4P and allies. Why prioritize corporations and right-wing politicians over the queer community?” the group asked.
“CP’s board voted to publish last year’s solidarity statement. This year’s removal was not voted on. One board member even quit in protest.
“Mayor Sutcliffe and others boycotted Pride last year, hurting our community financially. Now he wants to show up without apology — using Pride for political gain,” the group said.
Capital Pride can’t say it wasn’t aware of Q4P’s demands. Sunday’s stoppage came after at least a week of public calls to reinstate the statement.
But Capital Pride organizers slow-walked a response, as former sponsors and Ottawa’s mayor returned in the absence of the polarizing document.
Belatedly, the group said it stood by the views expressed in last year’s letter about Israel’s actions in Gaza, and said the statement was missing online due to a website “refresh,” reiterating Executive Director Callie Metler’s description of the removal as part of the organization’s annual process of “refreshing their online environment.”
By that time, the parade had launched and was aborted.
Capital Pride released a “Clarification on Parade cancellation” message to social media that said that Q4P was marching in the parade as “guests invited by the parade garnd marshall,” before the group forced the parade to stop.
“As a community organization, we strive to engage with our community members in good faith and to balance the various interests and demands that are made of us while also organizing one of the largest festivals in our city,” the statement said. “Throughout the summer, we had several meetings with Q4P along with other community groups to discuss the issues that are important to them.
“Unfortunately, the group refused to have a meaningful discussion about how to move forward. After over an hour of attempting to resolve the stoppage, it became clear that Q4P was unwilling to engage in a good faith conversation and was insistent on misrepresenting our discussions.”
“Rerouting the parade mid-way was not possible and the street closures for the parade route were only permitted to 4:00 pm. Given the constraints we were facing and the nature of the discussion with Q4P, we were left with no other choice than to cancel the remainder of the parade.”
The message said that other parts of Ottawa’s Pride festivities would continue as planned.
In a statement, Mayor Sutcliffe said it was “deeply regrettable that a group of activists chose to block the parade, ultimately leading Capital Pride officials to cancel the event.”
“My heart goes out to the many people in our city who were deprived of the opportunity to participate in this celebration of joy, resilience, and community.”
Texas Republicans‘ redrawn congressional maps will split up the district of the only out LGBTQ+ representative from the South.
Julie Johnson, an out lesbian elected to the state’s 32nd congressional district last year, condemned the GOP’s plans to pick up five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives by gerrymandering Democratic districts. She said the proposal, approved by the state House of Representatives Wednesday, would “decimate TX32, splitting my constituents into 8 different districts spreading all the way to the Oklahoma border and East Texas.”
“Today, Texas Republicans and Governor Abbott rammed through the Texas House a set of rigged and racist congressional maps that dismantle fair representation and silence the voices of millions of Texans,” Johnson said in a statement. “This is not democracy, it is a corrupt power grab designed to protect Donald Trump and his failed policies while ensuring Republican control for another decade. These maps were drawn behind closed doors with one goal in mind, to keep power in the hands of a New York felon while denying fair representation to Texans. It is an insult to every voter who believes their voices matter in our democracy.”
The new maps would go into effect in 2026, when every member of the U.S. House is up for reelection, severely limiting the possibility of Johnson maintaining her seat. She was first elected to the U.S. House in 2024 after serving in the Texas House for six years, becoming the first out LGBTQ+ person elected to Congress from the South.
In response to Texas Republicans’ plan, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for a special election in November for voters to approve a plan that would also redistrict the state, adding five Democratic seats in the U.S. House and nullifying Texas’ gains.
Texas’ new districts must still be approved by the Republican-controlled state Senate and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Johnson said that she and other Democrats aren’t giving up, and that they intend to “fight back in the courts.”
“[Republicans] have diluted the voices of hundreds of thousands that call Dallas County home,” she continued. “This was a targeted attack on my district and every other congressional district represented by a Democrat in Texas. But let me be clear: this is a national fight and it is not over. Democrats refuse to be silenced. We will continue to fight back in the courts, in Congress, and in other states to offset the cheating that has occurred in Texas.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appeared at least four times on the Reformation Red Pill podcast, a far-right podcast hosted by Joshua Haymes, an anti-LGBTQ+ extremist who was also a former pastor at the church that Hegseth attends, The Guardian reported.
The publication noted that Haymes wants to execute adulterers and people who have abortions, that he seemingly called for the deaths of LGBTQ+ Pride marchers, and also considers liberalism a greater threat to the nation than neo-Nazism.
Haymes is aligned with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), a Christian Nationalist denomination that believes the United States should be subject to biblical law, and is both a member and former pastoral intern of the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship church in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, where Hegseth and his family are members.
On August 5, Haymes posted a statement on X, which said, “I used to say homosexuality is no worse than other sins. All sin separates us from God after all! I was wrong. Sexual sin is uniquely evil. Sodomy is an abomination to God, along with crossdressing… It’s important for Christians to say so.”
While Haymes’ post included a Bible verse calling cross-dressing an “abomination,” Biblical laws also require the death penalty for anyone who practices fortune telling, curses their mother or father, accidentally kills someone else’s animal, or commits blasphemy. Other Old Testament laws demand death for anyone who charges interest on loans or works on Saturdays.
Most contemporary Christians don’t follow these ancient Biblical laws and say that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ made them obsolete. However, conservative Christians tend to cite anti-LGBTQ+ Bible verses as proof that God shares their hatred of LGBTQ+ people while ignoring Bible verses against other “sins”, like eating shellfish and wearing clothing made of two different fabrics.
On August 13, Haymes posted an image praising Italy for banning lesbian couples from becoming parents, writing, “By the grace of God, we will see this done in these United States.”
In October 2024, Haymes wrote on X, “Mutilating children, Or being an accomplice to mutilating children should be a capital offense. Jesus recommends execution by drowning.”
The post included an image of a man being drowned in the ocean with a large millstone tied to his neck. The image refers to a New Testament Bible verse that says those who cause children to stumble or sin would be better off being drowned in the sea with a large millstone hung around their neck.
In a June 28 post, Haymes posted footage of marchers in the Nashville, Tennessee Pride Parade and wrote, “We’re short on millstones at the Nashville Pride parade. This is sick. This is child abuse.”
When asked about his post, Haymes told the aforementioned publication, “I do not advocate for violence against Pride marchers. I do not advocate for violence of any kind. I do not believe that anyone should be drowning anyone in this scenario… My role is simply to give that warning. Pride marchers who are sexualizing children are in for a very, very harsh judgment when they stand before their maker.”
When asked for a comment about Haymes, a Pentagon spokesperson pointed to a statement declaring that “[Hegseth] is a proud member of a church that is affiliated with the Congregation of Reformed Evangelical Churches which was founded by Pastor Doug Wilson. He is a very proud Christian and has those traditional Christian viewpoints.”
Earlier this month, Hegseth reposted a video in which Wilson said he’d like laws against homosexuality to be reinstated in all 50 states.
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.”
In the United States, June has long been recognized asPride Month — a time for LGBTQ individuals and allies to celebrate identity, progress, and resilience. Historically, this month has also been a time for partners in government and the private sector to voice their support for our community, not just with words but with action.
After the Supreme Court legalized marriage equality in 2015 with theObergefell v. Hodges decision, corporate sponsors rushed to align with the outcome. And, with them, visibility, funding, and the power of mainstream recognition for hundreds of Pride celebrations across America. But lately, that momentum has stalled, and what’s replacing it is deeply troubling.
In 2024, many corporations cited “budget constraints” as their primary reason for scaling back theirPride sponsorships. But this year, the reasons are unmistakable. The current administration’s open hostility toward diversity, equity, and inclusion has created a chilling effect. Support for LGBTQ+ communities is being withdrawn, not because companies can’t afford to support us financially, but because they’re afraid to.
While many allies continue to show solidarity through actions like marching, volunteering, or attending Pride events, the previous rapid rise and now sudden fall of tangible financial support, such as sponsorships and corporate donations, is most revealing.DEI policies have become a lightning rod for political controversy, prompting large corporations to retreat from public support to avoid being targeted. These sponsors are not unaware of the optics. They’re choosing to step back because standing beside us comes with political consequences in 2025.
This drawback from corporate sponsors of as much as$200,000 to $350,000 per event sends a dangerous message to corporate America: support for the LGBTQ+ community is secondary to external political pressure.
This phenomenon raises a problematic question for LGBTQ Americans: How sincere was the corporate support, whether intangible or tangible, in the first place?
And many of us are asking this question.
How sincere was the rainbow logo on your company’s social media pages? How earnest was the big donation to our festival after the 2020 election? Did these companies ever care about us, or were their pre-2025 actions just performative virtue signaling? To be clear, performative allyship is not a new concept. But we wonder: was it all just “rainbow capitalism?”
Support and allyship for our community should not be confined to one month – that is what makes people question its authenticity. Sure, anyone can produce a feel-good video about how their company supports LGBTQ staff. But if it all stops on July 1, it does nothing for LGBTQ individuals.
And we aren’t blind to it. Pew Research Center reported that68% of LGBTQ adults think corporate promotion of Pride is just as they believe it is good for business. We know the difference between performative allyship and real, courageous support. Real allyship doesn’t disappear under pressure. It doesn’t end when the month does. It shows up 365 days a year, especially when it’s hardest. We know how to ask the hard questions: What backs this up? How does this support go beyond Pride Month? How can organizations show their support during the other eleven months of the year?
The lack of sponsorship and support during this year’s Pride answers these questions. It shows that too many corporations never truly cared about the LGBTQ community but chased public sentiment when it was “in style” to support us.
As a festival organizer and LGBTQ executive, I’ve felt firsthand how these retreats sting, especially for our Trans siblings, who the current administration has relentlessly targeted. We’re not dismissing the value of past support; many Pride events genuinely could not have happened without it. But when that support evaporates in the face of political backlash, it’s hard not to wonder if it was ever genuine to begin with.
This moment is a loyalty test. Who will stand with us now, not just when it’s popular, but when it’s hard? Who will invest in our future, even when it’s under attack?
Allyship doesn’t need to come in the form of a float or a flag. But it does need to be consistent. It needs to be visible in boardrooms, in hiring practices, in advocacy, and in year-round support of the grassroots organizations doing the work on the ground. If you genuinely care about the LGBTQ community, help us access the spaces historically off-limits to us and show your support for the companies that celebrate our lived experience.
The implications of corporate withdrawal go beyond the immediate loss of funds. Paired with a recentSupreme Court decision weakening protections for transgender individuals, it signals that political agendas are again taking precedence over the fundamental rights and dignity of vulnerable people. Pride was never just a party; it has always been a protest. And while we still celebrate, we are once again reminded that our joy is a form of resistance.
Rather than joining in celebration, our community is once again forced to rise above political hostility and cultural backlash. We will continue to rebuild, advocate, and celebrate ourselves in ways that reflect our worth — not only in June, but all year long. True allyship doesn’t retreat; it shows up when it’s needed most.
