Web page about iconic Golden Girls actress becomes latest victim of Defense department DEI purge

Iconic Golden Girls actress Bea Arthur, who served in the Marine Corps, has had her contribution scrubbed from Department of Defence (DOD) website amid an ongoing purge of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

The actress, born Bernice Frankel, was one of the first women to join the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, as noted by IMDB. As a trailblazer for future female Marines, she attended boot camp and became a typist.

In June 1943, she was transferred to Camp Lejune, where she attended the Motor Transport School, which helped her earn her next assignment as a truck driver and dispatcher in Cherry Point, NC. She was honourably discharged as  Staff Sergeant Arthur in September 1945, but her contribution has now been wiped from the DOD’s website. 

The DOC website only shows an image of Arthur during her time in the Marine Corps, but information relating to her wartime contribution has been scrubbed. The former link now leads to a “404 not found” page, and the URL begins “DEIbefore”.

The deletion was flagged in a thread on X by an user named “Tortured Marketing Department” (@Swiftillery). The thread began: “Bonus chapter of Women’s History Month in honor of the program scrubbing DOD web articles. Meet Bea Arthur, iconic Golden girl actress and one of the first women to join the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve. Her page has been removed.” The thread has had over 800,000 views at the time of writing.

Bonus chapter of Women’s History Month in honor of the program scrubbing DOD web articles. Meet Bea Arthur, iconic Golden girl actress and one of the first women to join the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve.

Her page has been removed.

1/ pic.twitter.com/uMDXChdj5u

— tortured marketing department (@swiftillery) March 20, 2025

Many people reacted with dismay to the news, with one responding: “Daily reminder that “DEI” is just code for attacking everything that isn’t a c1shet white man.”

Another said: “This is absolutely disgraceful and wrong. Bea not only is historically a bad ass but she’s so important to our culture as a whole. Just as much as Betty White was.”

Bea Arthur, who passed away in 2009 at the age of 89, was a tireless LGBTQ+ ally. She left $300,000 to a shelter for gay homeless teenagers in her will. The performer – who died in 2009 – was a long-term benefactor to the Ali Forney Centre, which is a New York-based homeless LGBTQ+ charity.

During her long career, Bea Arthur worked in Broadway and sitcoms, including All in the Family (1971) as Maude Findlay, followed by Maude (1972), which won her an Emmy Award, and Amanda’s (1983) before starring in The Golden Girls (1985) as Dorothy Zbornak, an acerbic substitute teacher and mother, earning another Emmy.

The Golden Girls was also a trailblazing and progressive programme in many ways. The series, which aired between 1985 and 1992, featured four older women sharing a Miami home and still retains cult status amongst the the LGBTQ+ community thanks to the trailblazing way it tackled a host of “controversial” subjects, such as the AIDS crisis, same-sex marriage and gay rights.

The removal of Bea Arthur’s contribution is part of Defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s apparent rush to comply with Trump’s crackdown on DEI initiatives, which has so far led to a large number of “diversity-related” DoD web pages being deleted.

In another example, a page about a Black war hero, Charles C. Rogers — who was awarded the Medal of Honor— was also removed from the website, though it was later restored.

Images of the famed World War II aircraft Enola Gay were also targeted, as was information about the contributions of WWII Navajo code talkers, who used their unique language to transmit messages indecipherable to the enemy.

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