'People are people': How Dolly Parton became an unlikely 2SLGBTQ+ icon, ally and advocate

Dolly Parton never forgot her roots, carrying the spirit of her Tennessee mountain home wherever she went and her deep Christian faith with her until the end.

Yet the omnipresent country music legend was as celebrated for her advocacy as much as her music. She spent decades championing women's rights, civil rights and gay rights, while openly denouncing several recent anti-trans and anti-drag bills, telling the Hollywood Reporter in 2023 that "I just want everybody to be treated good."

"I think everybody should be allowed to be who they are, and to love who they love. I don't think we should be judgmental," Parton told Billboard about her gay fanbase in 2014.

"Lord, I've got enough problems of my own to pass judgment on somebody else."

Parton, 80, died Tuesday in Nashville after a brief battle with cancer. Her publicist said she died peacefully, surrounded by loved ones. And among the many, many tributes pouring in celebrating the star's life and legacy, there's a common thread: her advocacy, allyship and enduring love for her 2SLGBTQ+ fans.

"Before I met her, I loved her because she took a risk and accepted me (and all of us) for being gay in a time where she didn’t need to say anything," singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile posted on Instagram Tuesday.

"She never wavered on accepting anyone for who they were and who they were meant to be."

As the Guardian points out in its tribute, Parton was beloved by many, "but it was perhaps her gay fans who claimed her most vociferously and publicly."

And, as dozens of 2SLGBTQ+ writers and media publications have noted since Tuesday's announcement, the world lost an icon, but "the queer community ... lost one of its most steadfast advocates."

'Always on the right side of history'

So, how did the granddaughter of a preacher, who grew up inside a two-room Appalachian cabin, become a global advocate and icon for the 2SLGBTQ+ community?

"She was always on the right side of history," a fan commented on an Instagram post by Impact.

As an early example, in 1984 — right around the time the AIDS virus was intensifying anti-gay stigma — Parton spoke out in support of her diverse fanbase in an interview with Andy Warhol for Interview magazine.

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"I got a huge gay following and some really macho-looking women," Parton said in the cover story.

"To me, people are people. … Many of my friends are gay, male and female. I don’t judge people. I don’t care what people do in their bedrooms and people shouldn’t care what I do in mine."

The Hollywood Reporter points out that a statement like that could have cost Parton a large portion of her country music audience, but "Dolly disregarded the possible consequences."

In the mid 1980s, alongside her manager, Sandy Gallin, Parton co-founded the production company that co-produced Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt. The documentary about the AIDS memorial quilt won an Academy Award in 1990.

Gallin also "openly acknowledged being gay, becoming one of the earliest Hollywood figures to do so," notes a 2017 tribute to him in the Los Angeles Blade. And he and Parton were inseparable, according to the publication, adding they considered each other "beyond best friends and almost soul mates"

In 1991, Parton released a song called Family, with the lyrics: "Some are preachers, some are gay. Some are addicts, drunks and strays. But not a one is turned away when it's family."

This move, in the historically conservative world of country music, when even the word "gay" was still controversial in mainstream culture, was "gobsmacking," notes The Advocate's John Casey.

"Country music in particular didn't go near queer identity — at all," Casey wrote.

"Dolly didn't make some giant political statement or scream it from the mountaintops. Instead, she made a family portrait and put us within the frame, perhaps without listening to those who might have told her not to."

By 1997, Parton was on the cover of Out magazine.

In a tribute posted to Instagram Tuesday, Out noted that even three decades later, "the image feels like an especially poignant reminder of the joy, generosity, and unapologetic individuality she brought to the world.

"From her music and philanthropy to her steadfast message of love and acceptance, Dolly made generations of queer fans feel seen."

WATCH | Icon Dolly Parton dead at 80:

Music icon Dolly Parton dead at 80

August 25|

Duration 2:32

'We are all God's children'

Her unwavering support continued over the coming decades.

In 1999, Parton collaborated with Culture Club — fronted by openly gay singer Boy George — for the song Your Kisses are Charity. In 2005, Parton wrote and performed Travelin' Through, the title song for Transamerica — a movie about a transgender woman. As the news site Wide Open Country notes, the song became "an anthem of equality."

Parton also voiced her support for gay marriage years before the U.S. Supreme Court made it a fundamental right in 2015.

"Sure, why can't they get married? They should suffer like the rest of us do," Parton told CNN host Joy Behar in 2009.

WATCH | Dolly Parton tells Larry King 'We are all God's children':

In 2011, she personally apologized to a lesbian couple after a security guard at Dollywood, Parton's namesake theme park, forced one of the women to turn her shirt inside-out before entering. The shirt had said, "Marriage is so gay."

"Everyone knows my personal support of the gay and lesbian community. Dollywood is a family park and all families are welcome," Parton said in a statement at the time.

She spoke out again about marriage equality in 2014, saying, "I think everyone should be with who they love." In 2016, Parton famously told Larry King, "We are all God's children."

"If you're gay, you're gay. If you're straight, you're straight. And you should be allowed to be how you are and who you are."

What younger fans sometimes miss, but older fans won't forget, is that Parton treated allyship "like it was no big deal," wrote the Advocate's Casey.

Parton paid for staff member to transition

In more recent years, Parton — who has famously quipped, "If I hadn’t been a girl, I’d have been a drag queen" — spoke out against Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming health care for minors, as well as the state's anti-drag laws.

"I try not to get into the politics of everything. I try to get into the human element of it," Parton told the Hollywood Reporter in 2023. 

"That’s who they are. They cannot help that any more than I can help being Dolly Parton."

But now we know her support started more quietly decades earlier. On Tuesday, Parton's former editor at HarperCollins revealed that the singer paid the medical costs for a member of her staff to transition back in the 1990s.

"She was a profoundly good and kind person; it wasn’t an act," Elissa Altman posted on Instagram.

Parton's mere memory served to continue her advocacy work Tuesday as a federal judge cited Parton as he struck down a Texas law banning drag shows.

In his ruling, Texas District Judge David Hittner determined the law was so broad even Parton could have faced penalties under it.

"Just as many people ... chastised Dolly Parton as a voluptuous sex symbol because of her big hair, flamboyant clothes and breast exposure ... there are 'erotic' elements in countless popular performances," Hittner wrote.