Excluding category from loop not working

After @Howdy_McGee confirmed the code works I had to look elsewhere. I noticed I had a duplicate post with the same title (that WASN’T categorized as “Gated”) that was always displaying. So I didn’t notice when the Gated one was disappearing. >.<

Hata!: SQLSTATE[HY000] [1045] Access denied for user 'divattrend_liink'@'localhost' (using password: YES)