Cracker Barrel has removed the “Pride” section of its website, which once highlighted the chain’s sponsorship of the Nashville Pride Parade. Visitors are now redirected to a “Culture and Belonging” page.
The company insists the change was part of routine site updates, not a reaction to backlash from right-wing conservatives.
“In connection with the Company’s brand work, we have recently made updates to the Cracker Barrel website, including adding new content and removing out-of-date content,” a spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Cracker Barrel recently attempted to rebrand with a new logo and restaurant redesign. Its conservative-leaning customer base balked at the loss of the chain’s Americana “country store” décor, replaced by a pared-down modernist theme and the removal of “The Old Timer,” an elderly white man leaning on a barrel in the logo.
The changes sparked accusations that Cracker Barrel was trying to go “woke,” prompting the company to quickly reverse course and restore “The Old Timer” to its logo. That reversal did little to quell conservative anger.
The restaurant remained under scrutiny from conservative activists like Robby Starbuck and Chris Rufo, who have built their reputations on pressuring companies to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies — which they claim are discriminatory — and to end any support for or acknowledgment of the LGBTQ community.
Critics also pointed to Cracker Barrel’s sponsorship of the 2024 Nashville Pride Parade and its launch of rainbow-colored rocking chairs for Pride Month. Some objected to the creation of an LGBTQ employee group called the “LGBTQ+ Alliance,” one of several business resource groups that also included racial minorities and veterans.
Those business resource groups are now at the center of complaints filed in July with the Tennessee Attorney General by the right-wing legal group America First Legal. The group argues that Cracker Barrel’s DEI policies create discriminatory employment practices, allegedly favoring minorities at the expense of white heterosexuals. AFL further contends that, because Cracker Barrel’s clientele skews conservative, such policies betray the company’s customer base.
A Cracker Barrel spokesperson told Fox News Digital the company had changed its business resource groups “months ago” to focus on corporate giving. The BRGs, still listed on the company’s website as recently as August 27, have since been removed.
Last week in Orlando, restaurateur Trina Gregory transformed 49 parking spots outside her eatery into canvases for local artists, who painted rainbow-colored murals in protest of a new federal mandate targeting street art. Under U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the department has ordered states to remove rainbow crosswalks and other murals deemed "visual distractions" from public streets, a directive embraced by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Both DeSantis and Duffy argue that rainbow crosswalks -- the primary target of their mural crackdown -- amount to political messaging and are inappropriate for public roads.
New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani is facing backlash after a photo resurfaced showing him alongside a Ugandan politician described as the "architect" of that country's law criminalizing homosexuality.
Mamdani, who defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by more than 12 points in the final round of ranked-choice primary voting in June, now leads a three-way race against Cuomo, running as an independent, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, the citizen patrol group once famous for policing New York's subways.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace once cast herself as an LGBTQ-friendly Republican. She has since become one of Congress’s loudest opponents of transgender rights -- and is now echoing a familiar refrain used by opponents of same-sex marriage on social media.
"Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," wrote Mace on X, repeating a long-used slogan that mocks same-sex relationships as “abnormal” and frames homosexuality as contrary to the Bible. The South Carolina congresswoman is currently running for governor.
A community note soon appeared under Mace’s post, pointing out that she voted twice for the Respect for Marriage Act -- once during its initial passage, and again when the House approved the Senate’s version. The 2022 law requires both federal and state governments to recognize same-sex marriages performed in states where they’re legal.
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