A rumor that country singer Reba McEntire said drag queens should not be allowed around children circulated widely online in the summer of 2024.
For example, on Aug. 18, 2024, Facebook page “Strong Community” posted a meme featuring an image of McEntire with text reading: “Drag Queens Don’t Belong in the Presence of Our Kids.”
In a comment on the post, the page’s administrator shared a link to an article on strongcommunityus.com, a website affiliated with the Facebook page. The article, which was also dated Aug. 18, 2024, began:
Country music legend Reba McEntire has never shied away from expressing her deep-rooted values, and her recent statement is no exception: “Drag queens don’t belong in the presence of our kids.”
As a strong advocate for family and traditional values, Reba believes in protecting the innocence of children and ensuring that they grow up in environments that reflect those values.
The rumor was also shared on another Facebook page, named “Update entertaiment [sic] news daily,” on Aug. 20, 2024.
That post, which had received around 71,000 reactions and 5,200 comments at the time of this writing, consisted of a nearly identical meme, and in the comments the page’s administrator linked to an article hosted on another website, tayler-amazing.numpet.com.
That article was identical to the one posted by Strong Community, with the exception of several individual letters that had been changed to look like Greek characters — for example, the Latin letter “n” was changed to the Greek letter “п” — in an apparent attempt to prevent the article from turning up in search results.
Some readers seemed to interpret rumor as a factual recounting of real-life events. For example, one comment left on the Strong Community post read: “YOU ARE SO RIGHT REBA.” Another read: “Agree. Let them be children. Life is short.”
However, there was no evidence that McEntire had ever said, “Drag queens don’t belong in the presence of our kids.” A Google search for the phrase found only reposts of Strong Community’s claim.
Nor was there any convincing evidence that the singer had made any public statement along those lines using different phrasing.
In fact, the results of a search for the terms “Reba McEntire” and “drag queens” consisted primarily of coverage of McEntire’s forceful criticism of a 2023 Tennessee law banning drag queens from venues accessible to minors in certain parts of the state.
When an interviewer for The Los Angeles Times asked McEntire what she thought of the politicians who campaigned for the law, for example, McEntire said: “I wish they would spend that much time and energy and money on feeding the homeless children in those two counties.”
Rather, the rumor about McEntire saying drag queens don’t belong around children originated with Strong Community and its affiliated website. Strong Community’s Facebook Intro describes its output as being satirical in nature, reading:
‘The Nest of Patriots’
Welcome to our Satirical platform where you’ll find satire news for your enjoyment and discernment. Dive into our content and explore the realm of satire and parody.
Strong Community has a history of making up stories for shares and comments, sometimes apparently relying on artificial-intelligence (AI) writing software to do its storytelling. Two different AI detectors, ZeroGPT and QuillBot, both determined that 100% of the text of the Strong Community article about the McEntire rumor was likely AI-generated.
(quillbot.com)
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Snopes has addressed similar satirical claims about McEntire in the past, including the assertion that she said neither Taylor Swift nor Beyoncé qualify as country singers. We have also previously addressed rumors originating from Strong Community, such as the false claim that transgender athlete Lia Thomas was considering retirement after her medals were taken from her by the NCAA.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.
