08/25/2026
Today, we lost an icon and the LGBTQ+ community lost a very dear friend.
Dolly Parton understood something that has always been at the heart of The Country Club community: everyone deserves a place where they are welcomed, celebrated and free to be exactly who they are.
Long before it was easy or fashionable to say so, Dolly embraced her LGBTQ+ fans. She stood for marriage equality, spoke with love and compassion about gay and transgender people, rejected those who used religion to judge others, and delighted in the generations of drag queens who found inspiration in her rhinestones, wigs, wit and glorious refusal to ever make herself smaller for anyone.
She once called herself a “patron saint” to a lot of drag queens, and famously told the story of entering a Dolly Parton look-alike contest filled with drag performers and losing.
There is something wonderfully q***r about Dolly’s legacy: the glamour, certainly, and the camp and the hair and the rhinestones, but more importantly, the courage to create yourself, embrace who you are, and then make room for everyone else to do the same.
Dolly spent a lifetime sending a message that resonated so deeply with many of us. You belong, you are worthy of love, and there is room for you here.
Today we hope the wigs are a little higher, the rhinestones a little brighter, and her music is playing very, very loud.
Thank you, Dolly - for the music, the laughter, the kindness, and for loving our community right back.
Rest beautifully, Dolly Parton.
1946–2026 🤍
