In August 2025, the owners of gay dating apps threatened that, if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 2015 ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, they’ll reveal all the Republican officials and members of Congress who allegedly secretly own accounts on their platforms.
A rumor that circulated online in August 2025 claimed the owners of gay dating apps threatened to reveal all the Republican officials and members of Congress who allegedly secretly own accounts on their platforms if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 2015 ruling in favor of same-sex marriage.
Users began sharing this matter on Aug. 11, the same day Kim Davis — a former Kentucky county clerk who spent six days in jail in September 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to a gay couple on religious grounds — formally asked the high court to consider taking up a case to overturn their June 2015 ruling in favor of same-sex marriage.
In one prime example of users sharing the rumor, on Aug. 12, a manager of the U.S. Democratic Socialists Facebook page posted (archived), “BREAKING: Gay dating apps are reportedly threatening that, if the Supreme Court bans gay marriage, they’ll reveal ALL closeted Republican officials and members of Congress who have accounts on their platforms.” The post received more than 115,000 reactions, including tens of thousands of likes, loves and laughs.
(U.S. Democratic Socialists/Facebook)
Other users also shared the rumor on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok (archived) and X (archived).
However, the rumor that the owners of gay dating apps threatened to reveal the names of Republican officials and members of Congress originated from The Halfway Post — a publication with an owner who describes their content as comedy and satire. If the rumor had been true, news media outlets worldwide would have covered it, and articles would have appeared in searches on Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo. Our searches located no such stories.
Dash McIntyre, owner of The Halfway Post, posted the made-up story on Aug. 11 on Facebook (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived). After the X post received millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes, McIntyre added in a reply (archived), in part, “This one should be true, shouldn’t it? Comedy is cathartic in fascist eras such as ours.”
(@HalfwayPost/X)
The Halfway Post’s X account bio (archived) read, “Dadaist graffiti news. Halfway true comedy and satire by @DashMacIntyre. I don’t report the facts, I improve them. Comedy is cathartic in fascist eras like ours.”
In an X direct message to Snopes, McIntyre linked us to an article providing more information about his content, writing, “An explanation for my warped, liberal and anti-fascist sense of humor.”
For further reading, past fact-check articles investigated similar satirical rumors — also originating from The Halfway Post — claiming the owners of the gay dating app Grindr threatened to share the identities of Republican politicians who “secretly” use its services, and that a Grindr executive said the Republican National Convention was “basically Grindr’s Super Bowl.”
