Do we like Beyoncé?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Years of visible support for trans and LGBTQ+ people, real money put into students and small businesses, and a couple of awkward choices on the other side.
Beyoncé Giselle Knowles was born in Houston in 1981 and came up through the girl group that became Destiny's Child, signed to Columbia in 1996. By 2003 she had gone solo with Dangerously in Love, which took five Grammys. That is the arc: child performer, group star, then the boss of her own empire.
The formative bit she talks about is pressure. She told Harper's Bazaar she felt that as a young Black woman she “couldn't mess up”, and that she became a disciplined teenager because of it. She started her company Parkwood at 27 after splitting with her father as manager, which tells you she likes running her own show.
On the harm test, her record is good. In 2017 she backed LGBTQ students after the Trump administration dropped federal protections for transgender students, writing that LGBTQ students need to know we support them. Earlier she put same-sex couples in her All Night video, and she dedicated Halo to the victims of the Pulse shooting.
It isn't spotless. Critics said in 2015 that she stayed quiet on Houston's equal rights ordinance, which failed at the polls. In 2023 she played a private gig in Dubai, where homosexuality is illegal, and LGBT commentators and the LGB Alliance both said they were disappointed. We found no sign of any anti-LGBTQ+ words from her, but a mate could fairly call those two calls dodgy.
On politics, she spoke at a Houston rally for Kamala Harris in October 2024 and told people to vote. Earlier in the campaign she said “But we have to vote.” That is a stand for voting and bodily autonomy, not a hate campaign. Where you land on the Democrats is your own business.
The recent legal noise is minor. Hirose Enterprises sued her company Parkwood, plus Sony and Warner Chappell, over a spoken-word sample on Alien Superstar. A judge threw the suit out in 2026 because the plaintiff company didn't exist when it filed. She was never named as a defendant herself.