Images of a drag queen complicate the case of a US congressman

She admitted she was guilty of “embellishing” her biography and resume, but said she was definitely never a drag queen.

Or at least that was until photos and videos surfaced online of what appears to be Republican Congressman George Santos dressed as a drag queen during his youth in Brazil.

“I was young and I had fun at a festival,” Santos, 34, insisted to a group of reporters who were chasing him at the airport on Saturday.

Additional evidence has since circulated further corroborating that the artist known in Rio de Janeiro as “Kitara Ravache” is, in fact, Santos, who has just taken office as a congresswoman in Washington.

Santos took to Twitter Monday to call those who impersonate him on television “disgraceful” and then went on to feud with drag queen Trixie Mattel.

The congressman was sworn in just three weeks ago, but already faces multiple calls to resign. He has allegedly lied about his college degrees, his work experience, his campaign finances, his charities and even his faith.

He has also falsely claimed that his grandparents survived the Holocaust and that his mother was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday that Santos would be removed from Congress if the House Ethics Committee determines he violated the law.

But the revelations of her apparent past as a drag queen have left even more questions to be answered as Santos is a member of a Republican Party increasingly hostile to drag culture.

While no Republican member of Congress has directly addressed the accusations of Santos as a drag queen, drag queening has become a hot topic in the party.

At least eight states have introduced Republican-backed legislation to restrict or censor drag performances, according to free speech group Pen America.

Right-wing groups across the country have targeted events where drag queens read stories to children in libraries, schools and bookstores, and parental rights activists have opposed drag events, which many in conservative media claim they are “harassing” and “sexualizing” children.

Moms for Liberty, a conservative group, argues that drag shows should be confined to “adult slots.” “Bringing drag to our children’s schools is intentionally provocative. They want to provoke people to react to this,” they say.

Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has said the drag “agenda” is “targeting” children.

Critics of that position argue that it falls within a long history of anti-LGBT rhetoric.

“It’s a reaction to 50 years of greater clothing freedom and greater visibility for the LGBTQ community,” says Michael Bronski, a Harvard University professor who has written on LGBT sexuality and politics.

Organized opposition of this kind was last seen in the 1970s, he says, when evangelical Christian activists and leaders launched a “moral panic” that came to be known as the Save Our Children coalition. “).

Opponents of drag queens today are employing the same “old line of attack,” Bronski says, but are up against an LGBT community that has made “inevitable” inroads woven into American culture.

Political attacks on drag culture grow

There is still little indication of where Santos, who ran on the campaign trail as an openly gay Republican, stands on the right-wing anti-drag rhetoric and legislation, but he has embraced other anti-LGBT talking points that are prevalent in some republican circles.

In 2020, he said that same-sex couples are “an attack on the family unit” and that children raised in such homes tend to grow up “with problems”. He is also an enthusiastic supporter of Florida’s law restricting LGBT education in elementary schools, labeled “Don’t Say Gay” by his critics.

Jeff Livingston, a Long Island drag queen, has performed for nearly a decade at clubs and children’s story events under the name Annie Manildoo. As Republicans have increased their rhetoric against the drag community, she has been met with more protests at her events in the past year and typically no longer leaves events dressed as his character for safety reasons.

“Drag has become so common that it’s an easier target now,” he says. “Anytime a minority group takes any kind of power, the majority gets a little anxious about it.”

With a background in acting and education, Livingston also regularly works in theaters and summer camps. “There are many queer people who regularly work with children of all ages without problems, despite the image that conservatives try to paint of us as sexual deviants,” she notes.

At the New York-based company Screaming Queens, Alex Heimberg manages more than 100 drag performers, who he says are in more demand than ever, from birthdays to fundraising galas.

“The country is very divided (but) it’s not that everyone hates drag and is protesting,” he says.

Heimberg, 55, who performed in the 1990s and 2000s as prominent drag queen Miss Understood, says she thinks it’s hypocritical for Republicans to keep George Santos in Congress while denouncing drag.

“Her misdeeds are more important than the fact that she was a drag queen,” he added. “The fact that she was a drag queen is just one more reason to laugh at her expense.”

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Sam Cabral
BBC News, Wash.