Appreciation: Dolly Parton was special to the LGBTQ+ community. She showed us our country loves us
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Set us as preferred In a brief online elegy for Dolly Parton, with whom she’d worked on the women-empowering film “9 to 5,” actor and famed liberal activist Jane Fonda made it a point to note that Parton cared about her queer fans.“To her gay and trans fans, I want you to know that she loved you,” Fonda wrote.“You know that without me telling you.”Indeed, we do.Dolly meant something special to the LGBTQ+ community, in part because she represented an America where we are accepted — not just in big blue cities, but in one-room cabins in East Tennessee and in every rural, American-flag-flying corner of this big country.Dolly was colorful and vivacious and unapologetic, and had more than a bit of drag queen in her.
But she was also an unabashed ally with a country twang — a friend from the part of America where many queer people still instinctively put their guard up.Of course, a country twang and queer acceptance can go hand in hand, and often do.The Human Rights Campaign just last week cited a new U.S.Census Bureau analysis showing a record-high 12% of U.S.
adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or gender diverse.That’s more than 25 million people, and they live all across the country.Many sound like Dolly.
Many are surrounded by loving, supportive family too.Yet it remained important, particularly as LGBTQ+ rights have come under increasing attack, that Dolly — big, beloved, down-home Dolly — had our back too.She wrote and sang the Oscar-nominated song “Travelin’ Thru” from the 2005 movie “Transamerica,” about a transgender woman and her son.She collaborated with her goddaughter Miley Cyrus on “Rainbowland,” a tribute to gay pride.
And she made no secret of where she stood.“I have some of everybody in my own immediate family and in my circle of employees.I’ve got tra...