From Jason Aldean to Laverne Cox, stars on both sides of the fight over gender and sexuality say speaking out came with a price
“There are only two genders, male and female.”
Donald Trump said it from the inauguration stage on Jan. 20, 2025, and made it official U.S. policy that same day. With that line, a culture war that had been simmering for years moved to the center of American politics, and celebrities on both sides were caught in it.
Some of Trump’s own supporters, including Caitlyn Jenner, have found themselves on the wrong side of his new rules. Some of his critics, like Laverne Cox, say speaking up has cost them work. And a few stars were swept up in the fight before he ever returned to office.
Here’s what they actually said, and what it cost them.
The Post That Cost Jason Aldean His Publicist
In August 2022, Brittany Aldean posted a before-and-after makeup video with a caption that would follow her husband’s career for years: “I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase,” The Advocate reported.
Country star Jason Aldean joked along in the comments. About a week later, the publicist who had worked with him for 17 years walked away.
Since then, the argument over gender, sexuality and LGBTQ+ rights has only grown louder, from the White House to the Grammys stage to the cartoons on Disney+. Stars on both sides of it say they have paid a price.
Brittany Aldean shared the video on Instagram on Aug. 23, 2022. Her husband replied: “Im glad they didn’t too, cause you and I wouldn’t have worked out.”
Other country artists pushed back fast. Singer Cassadee Pope objected to “hearing someone compare their ‘tomboy phase’ to someone wanting to transition. Real nice.”
Maren Morris went further: “Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie.”
Brittany Aldean did not back down. In an Instagram Story, she described gender-affirming care for children as mutilation and said it “is one of the worst evils,” adding, “Love is protecting your child until they are mature enough as an adult to make their own life decisions.”
Then came the business fallout. The GreenRoom, Jason Aldean’s publicity firm, announced it was ending a 17-year relationship with him.
“Music has always been and remains The GreenRoom’s core focus, so we had to make the difficult decision after 17 years to step away from representing Jason,” co-owner Tyne Parrish said. The firm did not say the post was the reason, but the split came about a week after it went viral.
Brittany Aldean said she had been misread. “Per usual, my words have been taken out of context,” she wrote, before launching a line of merchandise with the slogan “Don’t Tread on Our Kids.”
She defended herself on Tucker Carlson Tonight, too. “I’m advocating for children,” she said. “I think that children should not be allowed to make these life-changing decisions at such a young age.”
When Trump Supporters Faced Backlash
The Aldeans were an early flashpoint. Since then, some of the most prominent figures in Donald Trump’s orbit have found themselves at the center of their own storms over gender.
Elon Musk
In July 2024, the same month he endorsed Trump, the billionaire told Jordan Peterson that his transgender daughter, Vivian Wilson, was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus,” NBC News reported. He also claimed he had been tricked into authorizing her medical treatment when she was 16.
Wilson, then 20, answered him in her first interview, with NBC News. “He was not by any means tricked. He knew the full side effects,” she said.
Gina Carano
Lucasfilm dropped the actress from The Mandalorian in February 2021, saying her social media posts denigrated people based on their cultural and religious identities. The posts ranged from preferred pronouns to Covid-19 rules and claims of voter fraud. The one that ended her run appeared to compare hating someone for their political views to the treatment of Jews under the Nazis. Her lawsuit said she had compared no one to Jewish people during the Holocaust.
Carano sued Disney and Lucasfilm in 2024 in a case Musk paid for. The two sides settled in August 2025 on undisclosed terms, and Disney said it hoped to work with her again.
Kid Rock
In April 2023, the rocker and Trump supporter posted a video of himself firing a gun into cases of Bud Light. He was protesting the brand’s decision to send trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney a can with her face on it.
Caitlyn Jenner
The Olympic champion, who came out as trans in 2015 and has backed Trump on and off since 2016, ran into his policies herself this year. Her renewed passport came back with a male sex marker.
“I can’t travel internationally anymore. I can’t use my passport,” Jenner told Tomi Lahren in April 2026, Out reported. She said she had written to the president and had not heard back.
She would not blame Trump personally. But of the policy itself, she said: “I don’t think this was really thought out, what this means.”
Nicki Minaj
The rapper surprised the crowd at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix on Dec. 21, 2025, sitting down with Erika Kirk, widow of the group’s founder, Charlie Kirk. Minaj praised Trump after condemning him in the past, and Kirk raised Minaj’s online attacks on California Gov. Gavin Newsom over his support for gender-affirming care for minors.
Stars Who Say Defending Trans People Cost Them
On the other side, several stars say speaking up for transgender people has come with a price of its own.
Laverne Cox
The Orange Is the New Black star told The Guardian in June 2026 that she has lost about 90% of her income over two years, TheWrap reported. The figure is her own estimate. She said hosting contracts were not renewed, speaking dates dried up as diversity programs were rolled back, and graduate acting classes fell through because “it could be perceived as promoting trans ideology.”
She also said: “There are material consequences for this kind of discrimination and scapegoating.”
Pedro Pascal
In April 2025, after a U.K. Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of a woman, J.K. Rowling posted a photo of herself with a cigar and a drink, captioned “I love it when a plan comes together. #SupremeCourt #WomensRights,” NBC News reported.
Pascal, whose sister Lux is transgender, weighed in under an Instagram video calling for a boycott of Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise. He called her post “heinous loser behavior.” A representative for Rowling declined to comment.
Lady Gaga
Accepting a Grammy with Bruno Mars in February 2025, days after Trump’s orders on sex and gender, Gaga used her moment onstage to tell the audience that trans people are seen and deserve love.
Elliot Page
In September 2026, the actor joined a rally outside NYU Langone Health in New York, which had stopped gender-affirming care for minors after reaching an agreement with the Justice Department. NYU Langone denied any wrongdoing.
In a video filmed at the protest, Page said “these institutions caved to threats from Trump’s Department of Justice,” PinkNews reported.
Rosie O’Donnell
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland shortly before Trump’s second inauguration. She told CNN that after reading Project 2025, she decided “it was time for me and my nonbinary child to leave the country,” ABC13 reported.
In July 2025, a week after she criticized his administration’s response to the Texas floods, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.” CNN legal analyst Steve Vladeck called the idea unconstitutional.
O’Donnell’s reply: “go ahead and try, king joffrey with a tangerine spray tan. i’m not yours to silence. i never was.”
The Fight Over What Kids Watch
Beneath the celebrity feuds sits a question many parents argue about at home: what should young children see on screen?
In his January 2025 inaugural address, Trump declared that federal policy would recognize only two genders, male and female. Weeks earlier, Disney had already made a choice of its own.
In December 2024, the studio removed a transgender storyline from Pixar’s Disney+ series Win or Lose. A Disney spokesperson told TheWrap that “many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”
The cut was not a one-off. GLAAD’s latest film study found no LGBTQ characters at all in the 19 animated and family films that major studios released in 2025, down from two the year before. GLAAD argues that studios are leaving money on the table, noting that many LGBTQ adults are raising children.
The Supreme Court weighed in on the classroom version of the same fight. In Mahmoud v. Taylor, decided 6-3 in June 2025, it ruled that Maryland parents with religious objections must be allowed to opt their children out of lessons using LGBTQ-themed storybooks, The Advocate reported.
“We have long recognized the rights of parents to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in dissent that the ruling “constitutionalizes a parental veto power over curricular choices long left to the democratic process and local administrators.”
The public is split, depending on the question. In a Pew Research Center survey of 5,097 adults in February 2025:
- Pew found 66% favored requiring trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth.
- 56% favored banning gender transition care for minors.
- 56% also favored protecting trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces.
- 47% favored making it illegal for public elementary schools to teach about gender identity, while 34% opposed it.
In June 2026, the Supreme Court also upheld state laws that limit girls’ school sports teams to students born female, policies already in place in 27 states, according to Education Week.
Was Anyone Really Cancelled?
Cancel culture is the label fans reach for when a star pays a price for speaking out. Whether it fits is its own debate.
When Lucasfilm let Carano go in 2021, Nevada Independent columnist David Colborne asked whether she had really been cancelled at all. He argued that nobody has a consistent definition of the term, and predicted she would be just fine.
Aldean lost a publicist, and Carano lost a role she later settled over. Cox, by contrast, says most of her income has disappeared.
Sometimes the line is drawn behind the scenes. Dave Chappelle, whose jokes about trans people have drawn criticism for years, told a San Francisco audience in February 2025 that Saturday Night Live producers barred him from talking about transgender people and Gaza when he hosted that January. NBCUniversal did not respond to requests for comment.
Join the Conversation
Celebrities on both sides of this debate say they have paid for their words. Parents, meanwhile, are still deciding what their own kids should watch. We want to hear from you:
- Should children’s cartoons and movies include LGBTQ characters and families, like the family of a boy with two dads, or should those conversations be left to parents?
- Is it fair for a star to lose work over what they say about gender and sexuality, whichever side they are on? Does that change when the target is a comedian like Jimmy Kimmel?
- Does a celebrity’s support for Trump, or opposition to him, change how you see their views on LGBTQ issues?
Tell us what you think in the comments on our Facebook page.
Featured image: Composite. Left: Daniel Torok, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Center: Astrobobo, via Pixabay. Right: Web Summit, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons