Anti-LGBTQ+ MAGA darling Candace Owens denies that she’s a lesbian

This story originally appeared on Them.In a dizzying few weeks of queer discourse, this one might take the cake: People online are speculating that influential right-wing pundit and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens is a lesbian.For days now, we have reviewed an enormous influx of videos, social media posts, unverified rumors, and, of course, memes but cannot independently confirm the details contained in the most recent blog that seems to have intensified the latest public conjecture about Owens’ sexuality. However, the conversation became so loud in far-right circles — eliciting commentary by everyone from Alex Jones to Nick Fuentes to Laura Loomer —that Owens herself decided to respond. In a long post to X on September 30, she denied the speculation, and again renounced the claims in a livestream to her YouTube channel the same day. “Of everything they’ve made up, this is the most deranged,” she wrote in response to a thread on the controversy by right-wing streamer Harrison H. Smith. Owens has a lengthy history of vehement anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric throughout her career. She called same-sex marriage “a sin” in a 2024 interview with openly gay journalist Don Lemon, for example, and recently spread the false conspiracy theory that French First Lady Brigitte Macron is transgender to the point that she was hit with a defamation lawsuit. The disjuncture between the rumors around Owens’ sexuality and her public statements on LGBTQ+ topics has inspired similar online commentary as that currently circulating around Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who was recently alleged to have had sexual relationships with two female staffers, despite her staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ voting record. Boebert has similarly denied that story, saying, “I’m not a lesbian or bisexual.”But what exactly are people saying about Owens, where did the speculation begin, and what does Erika Kirk’s takeover of Turning Point USA after her husband’s assassination have to do wi