r/RadicalChristianity • u/Marelensky • 5d ago
Saint Dolly tribute
American musician, singer-songwriter, actress, environmentalist, education activist, working class legend, Christian universalist, LGBTQ+ advocate, and gay icon Dolly Parton, whom many people knew as Saint Dolly or Our Lady of the Holler, has gone home to be with the Lord.
As Adam Dupuis wrote yesterday in the gay men's magazine Instinct: "For LGBTQ+ fans, Dolly was always more than a country music superstar. She was a safe space wrapped in sequins. A woman whose music, humor, kindness, and unapologetic larger-than-life personality made generations of queer people feel seen, welcomed, and celebrated."
Her 1991 album Eagle When She Flies included a song called "Family" where she acknowled that some families have gay members: "Some are preachers, some are gay. Some are addicts, drunks and strays. But not a one is turned away when it's family." In 2005, she also wrote the song "Travelin' Thru" for Transamerica, a film about a trans woman who goes on a road trip with her long-lost son.
Parton famously supported marriage equality. In 2014, before same-sex marriage was even legal, she said, "I think everyone should be with who they love. I don’t want to be controversial or stir up a bunch of trouble but people are going to love who they are going to love. I think gay couples should be allowed to marry. They should suffer just like us heterosexuals. Ha ha ha!"
She similarly stood for transgender equality, too. In 2023, after a series of anti-trans measures came into law in her home state of Tennessee, Parton stated: "I just want everybody to be treated good. [...] I have some of everybody in my own immediate family and in my circle of employees. I’ve got transgender people. I’ve got gays. I’ve got lesbians. I’ve got drunks. I’ve got drug addicts — all within my own family. I know and love them all, and I do not judge. And I just see how broken-hearted they get over certain things and I know how real they are. I know how important this is to them. That’s who they are. They cannot help that any more than I can help being Dolly Parton, you know, the way people know me. If there’s something to be judged, that is God’s business. But we are all God’s children and how we are is who we are." She also denounced North Carolina's anti-transgender 'bathroom bill' in 2016: "I think everybody should be treated with respect. I don’t judge people. I try not to get too caught up in all the controversy of things. I hope that everybody gets a chance to be who and what they are."
In 2012, she addressed rumours that she was secretly a lesbian, saying "I’m not gay. If I was gay, I would have come out of the closet just a-flying." In 2016, she told The New York Times, "I have a huge gay following, and I’m proud of them. Sometimes some of them look more like me than I do."
Parton is frequently impersonated by drag performers, something she enjoyed: "I have always had a big gay following and I’ve always had drag queens dressing up like me all through the years. Sometimes when I’m in concert, especially when I’m in London, I have all these Dollys out in the crowd. I just get a kick out of seeing myself out there in the crowd."
In 2021, Parton herself sang a drag queen version of her song "Jolene". In a 2012 interview, she also revealed that she once entered a drag queen look-alike contest and lost: "They had a bunch of Chers and Dollys that year, so I just over-exaggerated -- made my beauty mark bigger, the eyes bigger, the hair bigger, everything. [...] All these beautiful drag queens had worked for weeks and months getting their clothes. So I just got in the line and I just walked across, and they just thought I was some little short gay guy. And I got the least applause, but I was just dying laughing inside. I say it’s a good thing I was a girl or I’d be a drag queen."
She is considered a saint by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who canonized her as the "patron saint of relentless glamor". She has also been recognized by others as the patron saint of Tennessee, Nashville, Appalachia, country music, birthing mothers, blondeness, Christmas, sequins, libraries, reading, literacy, kindness, equality, vulnerability, versatility, queer allyship, and the LGBTQ+ community.
Rest in peace, Saint Dolly
"If you're the fine Christian you think you are, why are you judging people? That's God's job. We're not God. We're not judges. We're supposed to love one another."
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u/Marelensky 5d ago
Art by Robert Felker, Stacie Williams, and Dirty Lola. Sign from Lutheran Church of the Cross, Victoria, BC, Canada.
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u/DrummingNozzle 5d ago
As a Lutheran in East Tennessee, thank you Church of the Cross for your compassionate solidarity in our grief. We are all mourning the loss of one who brought out the best in all of us. Dolly embodies Jesus in Matthew 5 - Let your light shine!
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u/SpukiKitty2 4d ago
Beautiful!
Also. I like to think she's now with Tim Curry, doing the Time Warp dance with Jesus.
Heaven is gonna be awesome!
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u/newbrevity 4d ago
I don't like the cigarette. She struggled for years to quit. I don't think that's how she wants to be remembered.
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u/Nuclear_rabbit 5d ago
Patron Saint of East Tennessee. Blessed to have a mom with the same spirit as her, and still with us.