Comedian, actress, writer, and podcaster Whitney Cummings has been slammed for sharing controversial remarks on social media in reaction to the Los Angeles fires — including a homophobic conspiracy theory.
Amid sharing posts that declared she would arm herself with a wooden sword to fight alleged arsonists and blaming the media for misreporting information about the fires, Cummings posted a video Friday questioning the leadership of the "lesbians in charge of" the Los Angeles Fire Department.
"I came across a video of the fire chief. A lesbian. Love it.... Tried to be one, didn't take," Cummings said in an X video. "I don't think I'm a lesbian...I just live in Los Angeles. The men are so effeminate that honestly, at this point, dating a woman is like the straightest thing you can do."
Cummings is referring to Los Angeles’s first out LGBTQ+ fire chief, Kristin Crowley. Throughout the disaster, Crowley has become a lightning rod of social media criticism among conservatives, who have called her a "DEI hire" and accused her of being unqualified — despite decades of experience.
Though Cummings acknowledged that "lesbians can be firefighters" and that she's not "thinking about your genitals or your preferences" when it comes to emergency responders, she then proposed that gay women running the LAFD are deliberately "recruiting more lesbians" to work with them.
Cummings compared this alleged hiring process to a gay man only hiring other gay men, a straight woman wanting to hire "more hot guys" to work with, or a straight man declaring that his workplace needs "more hot blondes." Cummings then posed the question, "Isn't that essentially just recruiting people in your dating pool to work at your office?"
The video concluded with Cummings showing an X post claiming that "all of the people in charge of L.A.'s fire response are lesbians named Kristin." She adds, "I don't recall voting on a prop that said we could recruit our fire team off Grindr. What?"
Lesbians were not Cummings's only controversial target. In other incendiary social media posts, Cummings mused about "people in L.A. talking about fire retardant more than they need to because they're having fun using the R-word again." She also joked about hoping that alleged arsonists "aren't near where Diddy stored his video tapes."
And when an X user replied with a conspiracy theory that the recent L.A. fires were related to a "massive land grab and the upcoming Olympics," Cummings replied, "A lot of people talking about this."
PRIDE's sister site, Out, has reached out to Whitney Cummings for comment.
Best known for creating the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls, starring on NBC's Whitney, and hosting the Good for You podcast, Cummings is set to appear soon as a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race season 17.
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Whitney Cummings's conspiracy theories about the 2025 Los Angeles fires have prompted a negative response from Hollywood stars, influencers, and other social media users. Content creator and Out100 honoree Matt Bernstein (@mattxiv) wrote on X: "I'm fine with a straight guy but THREE straight men? Something's fishy," in response to Cummings's reaction about three lesbian firefighters.
Without naming names, actor, writer, and comedian Guy Branum shared a few reactions Saturday that seem pointed at Cummings. These X posts read: "Multiple lesbians being at the top of an organization that requires brute strength, technical skill, and a desire to save people isn't DEI, it's nature taking its course."
In what seemed to be a reaction to Cummings's intent to fight arsonists with wooden swords, Branum stated, "If you are trying to hunt down an arsonist with a blowtorch, you should probably bring a weapon that isn't, you know, highly flammable."
Branum also called out this type of behavior in an Instagram video:
"This is not a universal amongst comedians right now, but I just wanted to say that I think being a vigilante is bad. Going into dangerous areas where there are active fires and emergency crews are working, with weapons, because you think you're going to hunt down the arsonists… It's danger to yourself, it's a danger to innocent people who you could mistake for arsonists, and it's a danger to the rescue crews who might have to save you from harm you do to yourself."
The Bros star continued, "I love free speech, [and] I love America protecting free speech, but I think that people advocating, modeling, and doing dangerous things during times of crisis is dumb and it's wrong. I feel obliged to say: I don't think you should do it. I don't think you should encourage people to do it. I think it's really dumb. And I think, if you don't like California, I'm excited for you to leave."
@theserfstv shared a Family Guy meme that shows Lois Griffin staring at a pill bottle that reads:
"Throwing LGBTQ+ people under the bus to salvage dead career."
X user @KrangTNelson wrote:
"[Seeing people pour gasoline into the sewer] f*ck I gotta text comedian Whitney Cummings about this."
Cummings is far from the only person to blame LGBTQ+ people for the L.A. fires. In addition to the online vitriol aimed at Crowley, a man made headlines last week for saying "all the gay people in L.A." were responsible for the destruction in an interview with local reporters, who quickly shut him down.
This story is developing…
