A video from a No Kings protest in New York is making the rounds on the internet for an absurd conversation. A street interviewer asked a young woman if it was “homophobic” to talk about the Strait of Hormuz instead of the “Gays of Hormuz”, and she instantly agreed. It racked up millions of views within hours and set off a firestorm of reactions. Some people couldn’t believe it, and others just lost it laughing.
If you missed the context, the Strait of Hormuz is a slim but vital waterway in the Persian Gulf. About a fifth of the world’s oil passes through it. Lately, it has been at the center of a deepening global crisis after U.S. and Israeli forces carried out joint strikes on Iran, which basically shut down shipping in the strait and sent oil prices climbing everywhere.
It looks like the video, originally posted on Instagram, was filmed around March 28, 2026, during the third round of “No Kings” protests. These were massive anti-Trump rallies that broke out all over the U.S., and even spread to parts of Western Europe. The clip itself is just 38 seconds long, but after it landed online on March 31, it exploded into one of the biggest talking points of the weekend.
The New York-based interviewer, using a tongue-in-cheek, catch-you-off-guard style you see in a lot of street interviews, tosses an intentionally ridiculous, pun-filled question at a young woman at the rally: “Isn’t it a little bit homophobic that we’re so focused on the Straits of Hormuz and not the Gays of Hormuz?”
He is obviously playing off the word “Strait,” which sounds like “straight,” flipping it into a joke about sexual orientation. The woman doesn’t laugh, call out the joke, or push back at all. She just says, “Yes, I agree. Yes, for sure.”
When he follows up and asks why she thinks people are “willing to leave the gays of Hormuz behind,” she goes along with it, too: “I think it’s just history. Historically, like, you know, gays have always been very discriminated against, which is wrong on so many levels… Even in war.”
Then, the interviewer says maybe the area should be turned into something like Fire Island, the famous LGBTQ+ getaway in New York, and she agrees again. The whole time, she never seems to realize he is joking.
Internet Reacts to the ‘Gays of Hormuz’ Protest Clip From New York
Some responses leaned into the absurdity of the geopolitical contrast. “The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, currently controlling the Strait of Hormuz, will be relieved to know this is the real threat,” one person wrote. Another took a broader swipe at political discourse: “When every serious issue gets filtered through culture wars, even geopolitics starts sounding like satire.”
Disbelief dominated much of the thread. “This is fake right??? Right???” one commenter asked, while another kept it blunt: “She’s just confidently saying nonsense.”
A darker thread of humor ran through several replies. “Remember, these people can vote,” one comment read. Another added, more pointedly: “Sir, it is not fair to pick on the intellectually disabled like that.”
This clip lands for many reasons. Right now, the Strait of Hormuz isn’t just some distant headline. You have oil supplies turned upside down, gas prices shooting up, and a handful of countries flexing their military muscle. So when a protester earnestly tries to reframe all this as an LGBTQ+ issue, while apparently unaware she was answering a joke, it sets people off.
For folks skeptical of progressive protests, it almost feels too perfect. Here’s someone handling identity politics but missing the facts about what’s going on. On the flip side, some people just find the humor in the situation: watching a massive geopolitical crisis get twisted into a pun that flew right over her head.
