For LGBTQ activists, Grimes’s unforgivable sin is her sexual history.
Pop star Grimes is learning the hard way that inclusivity has its limits. She has been invited to perform at the WorldPride 2025 event in June in Washington, D.C, and is excited to “MAKE AMERICA GAY AGAIN,” she says on X. But calls for her cancellation are slowly mounting, despite the activist’s longtime support for the LGBTQ cause. The reason: She is one of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s baby mothers.
Grimes, or Claire Elise Boucher, is a Canadian star who began to release music in 2006. During her successful 20-year career, Grimes has performed at all-star music festivals such as Coachella and Lollapalooza, has opened for Diplo and Skrillex, Lana Del Rey, and Florence and the Machine, and has also gone on multiple tours herself. She is a mother to three children with tech billionaire Musk: X Æ A-Xii, who’s four years old, Exa Dark Sideræl, who’s three, and Techno Mechanicus, who’s two.
Grimes and Musk met on Twitter and went public with their relationship at the 2018 Met Gala; Musk loves her for her “wild fae artistic creativity and hyper intense work ethic,” he said around the time. When Musk’s donations to Republicans were reported in 2018, Grimes said that “there is no world in which I’m ok w republican donations,” but added that Musk’s donations were “the price of doing business.” Over the next year, the couple’s relationship status remained pretty unclear. (They followed and unfollowed each other on social media a couple of times.) In May 2020, the couple had a baby boy — X. They welcomed their second child, Exa, in 2021 via surrogate. Grimes said at the time that she would “probably refer to [Musk] as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid.” Their third child, Techno, was born in 2022. The couple split after that and have been involved in custody disputes since 2023; the situation between Musk and Grimes is unique, and the pair does not agree on every parenting decision or political position.
For example, in 2020, Musk wrote on Twitter that “pronouns suck.” Grimes in response said that she could not “support hate” and asked Musk to stop saying such things. Musk also has a son, with ex-wife Justin Musk, who identifies as a girl, named Vivian Wilson. Musk said during an interview with Jordan Peterson last year that Vivian is “dead — killed by the woke mind virus.” He “lost” his son to gender dysphoria, Musk added. Grimes publicly came to Vivian’s defense, saying “I love and am forever endlessly proud of Vivian.”
Grimes is also unsupportive of the way Musk has paraded the couple’s eldest around the White House. Musk brought four-year-old X to the Oval Office in a now-viral appearance, and Grimes said on social media that the boy “should not be in public like this.”
In addition to the six (one deceased) children Musk has had with his ex-wife, he shares three children with top Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis. Conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair claimed this month that she gave birth to Musk’s youngest child late last year. Musk has yet to confirm the claim.
Grimes has said before that the Elon Musk she knows today is unrecognizable to her and very different from the man she first fell in love with. Who knows if that’s true? It should be no one’s business, but queer activists are nonetheless upset that Grimes has been invited to the WorldPride festival.
“Grimes literally has children with Elon fing Musk-rat, the person that is making us all feel this fing small, or at least attempting to make us feel this fing small,” Hope Giselle, executive director of the National Trans Visibility March, said during a recent live-stream. “Y’all are gonna platform Grimes right underneath the headliners? That does not make fing sense.”
There are others like Giselle who accuse Grimes of “having children with a Nazi” and of “hate and complicity in [the Trump] administration’s actions.” All these criticisms against Grimes amount to guilt by association. It doesn’t matter that Grimes has repeatedly made her support for the LGBTQ community known — her unforgivable sin is her sexual history. A bit judgmental for the party of sexual liberation and inclusivity, no?