California now has an official Dolly Parton Day, and West Hollywood isn't wasting the excuse to celebrate. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill last Sunday declaring September 25 an annual day of tribute to the country legend, who died in August, and the neighborhood's LGBTQ+ bars are already planning drag shows, movie nights, and rhinestone-soaked parties.
A Proclamation Rooted in "9 to 5"
The date wasn't chosen at random. Fans of Parton pushed for 9/25 as a nod to her 1980 anthem "9 to 5," the working-women's rallying cry that became one of her signature hits. Newsom leaned into that spirit of joyful defiance at the bill's signing ceremony.
With this bill, we are not just establishing a day to celebrate Dolly Parton; we are creating an annual reminder to us, every year, to live the way she did, joyfully, graciously, and with a whole lot of heart.
Gavin Newsom
It's a fitting tribute for a woman whose career spanned six decades, more than 50 studio albums, roles in a dozen films, and appearances across more than 50 television programs. She died on August 25 at age 80, after what her family described only as a brief battle with cancer.
West Hollywood Throws a Rhinestone-Studded Party
West Hollywood's gay bars have wasted no time turning the new holiday into a full-on citywide toast. Micky's WeHo is running a Dolly-themed edition of its recurring drag show, Cirque du So Gay, with queens performing to her catalog alongside Parton-inspired cocktails. The Gym Bar is screening 9 to 5, the 1980 workplace satire written and directed by gay filmmaker Colin Higgins and starring lesbian comedian Lily Tomlin, paired with themed food and drink.
Schmitty's Bar is asking patrons to show up in country western gear for a "Dolly photo booth," with a DJ spinning her hits and bartenders pouring Tennessee Teas. The V Wine Room plans to run her biggest songs alongside clips from her film career all night. It's a modest, joyful gesture, but it fits a performer who spent decades being embraced by drag culture and gay fandom long before it was politically convenient for country stars to acknowledge it.
A Legacy of Quiet, Consistent Advocacy
Parton rarely discussed politics directly, twice turning down the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a proposed statue at the Tennessee Capitol. "I don't do politics," she said on her podcast, Dolly Parton's America, in 2019. "I have too many fans on both sides of the fence." But her actions told a clearer story than her party affiliation ever could.
As far back as a 1984 Interview magazine cover story, she was telling Andy Warhol she had "a huge gay following" and didn't judge how people lived their private lives, a notably risky statement to make publicly during the AIDS crisis and the Reagan-era culture wars, when much of her country audience would have recoiled. Her former book editor later said Parton personally covered a staff member's transition-related medical costs in the 1990s, and she kept a longtime friendship with her transgender chauffeur, whom she thanked by name in her 1994 memoir.
Her art followed the same thread. She let her song "Travelin' Thru" anchor the 2005 transgender road-trip drama Transamerica, earning an Oscar nomination and performing it at that year's Academy Awards. She spoke out against anti-trans bathroom bills, telling CNN Money that "everybody should be treated with respect," and personally apologized in 2011 after a woman was told to turn her marriage-equality T-shirt inside out at Dollywood. As recently as 2023, she voiced support for Tennessee's trans community as the state passed a wave of anti-trans laws. After her death, a Texas federal judge even cited her while striking down a drag ban, ruling it was written so broadly it could have penalized Parton herself.
I have a huge gay following, and I'm proud of them. Sometimes some of them look more like me than I do.
Dolly Parton
She wasn't flawless on the subject, drawing criticism at times for suggesting some people identify as nonbinary or pansexual for effect. But the overall arc of her public life bent steadily toward acceptance, right down to being godmother to genderfluid pop star Miley Cyrus.
MQ's Take
It says something that California didn't need Dolly Parton to march at a rally or endorse a candidate to earn this kind of honor. She built decades of trust with LGBTQ+ people through small, repeated choices: paying a friend's medical bills, lending a song to a trans character's story, correcting a theme park employee, refusing to disown her queer fans even when it might have cost her. A statewide day named for her isn't really about politics at all. It's West Hollywood, and now California, saying thank you to someone who showed up for the community quietly, consistently, and for a very long time.
Source: LGBTQ Nation
Cover photo: Office of the Lieutenant Governor of California, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
