Having A Drag Performer In Congress Is Great-- But Not Kitara-- Help Elect Maebe A Girl, Dump Santos

I don’t think I’ve ever been to a drag show. I may have been; but I don’t recall. I was on an overnight ferry from Sweden to Holland once— returning from a long vacation in Finland— and we were all exhausted and seasick— maybe a little inebriated— and 3 or 4 of us lip-synched and pantomimed to a couple of Supremes songs. But we weren’t wearing girls’ clothes, let alone the elaborate costumes Long Island Congressman George Santos, or whatever his name is, used to wear when he did his drag routines. Santos once publicly admitted (on Wikipedia) that he was a drag queen but now denies he ever was.

Yesterday, The Atlantic, published 3 articles on drag shows. Well… one on drag shows, Drag Shows Are Free Speech by Conor Friedersdorf, and two on Congressman Kitara. Friedersdorf noted that currently there are “Republican legislators in at least seven states [who] are pushing bills to restrict shows where performers may deviate from traditional gender norms. The most sweeping and objectionable proposals are not mere efforts to deprive drag shows of taxpayer funding or to keep them out of public primary schools. Rather, they would classify drag shows (as the sponsoring legislators variously define them) as akin to pornography. They would redefine any venue hosting such a show as an adult business, or try to shield even teenagers from drag in a society where almost all of them have regular access to the internet. Should any such proposal pass into law–– at this early stage, their prospects are uncertain and may vary from state to state— the free speech and association rights of private venues, performers, artists, and willing audiences will all be infringed upon. And for what? These proposals are needless, excessive, and unconstitutional–– so much so that more than one would belong in a Hall of Fame for legislative overreach that is at odds with freedom of speech… I can find no evidence that any child has been harmed as the result of a drag performance. One suspects that some GOP legislators see drag shows not as especially big problems so much as big opportunities because a faction of their constituents zealously dislike them.”

Regardless of motivation, any Constitution-respecting American should reject a law that infringes on free speech or artistic expression if the matter in question has zero proven victims. Some supporters of anti-drag laws maintain that drag shows have the effect of “grooming” kids into LGBTQ activism or an LGBTQ lifestyle. But that claim is speculative and unproven––and even if it were true that drag shows influence how kids think about gender, neither art nor free speech can survive if it is constitutionally unprotected anytime it influences how some of the children who witness it think. Of course, once drag-queen story hours for children weirdly became both progressive acculturation events and culture-war battle grounds, attempted interventions in statehouses was inevitable. Perhaps it was also inevitable that many proposals would go further than is legal. Neither faction is committed to butting out when private undertakings offend its sensibilities. In this matter the Republicans are in the wrong.

In Nebraska, where the age of majority is 19, a law proposed by State Senator Dave Murman would prohibit anyone 18 or younger from being present at a drag show, which it defines expansively, as follows: First, the performance’s “main aspect” is “a performer which exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer's gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers.” (I’d have thought a conservative would say that one’s sex is recorded at birth, not that one’s gender is assigned, but set that aside.) Second, “the performer sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience for entertainment.”

By that definition, an 18-year-old would be legally prohibited from attending a performance of the Broadway musical Mrs. Doubtfire, a comedy set by Eddie Izzard, a lecture on being trans by Caitlyn Jenner, or a rock concert by a female-and-costumed Beatles tribute band.

The proposed Nebraska law goes on: “Any person nineteen years of age or older who knowingly brings an individual under nineteen years of age to a drag show shall be guilty of a Class I misdemeanor.” That standard would have made criminals of numerous World War II officers, what with the ubiquity of drag shows performed by and for troops overseas during that era. (Here’s Ronald Reagan introducing a dramatization of one of those shows circa 1943.) I hoped to question Murman about the breadth of entertainment that his proposal would constrain and the conduct that it would criminalize, but a spokesperson declined an interview invitation while passing along the prepared statement “I will always uphold my promise to enact policies that reflect Judeo-Christian values and defend the innocence of children.”

And George Santos, or whatever his name is, is hardly the first Republican politicians to deck himself out in women’s clothing to entertain people. These two made a little show out of it— a show that would be banned in at least half a dozen states if their anti-drag show proposals pass:

David Graham’s column, The George Santos Saga Isn’t (Just) Funny, doesn’t single out the congressman’s glory days as a Brazilian drag queen, just lumps it in my the growing list of unexpected behavior. “This week alone,” he wrote, “we’ve learned that Santos’s mother, who he said was in the Twin Towers on 9/11 and died years later from complications, probably wasn’t even in the United States that day. We’ve heard an allegation that he stole $3,000 he had raised for a military veteran’s ailing dog, a story that seems too cartoonish to make up. We’ve also seen a photo that a Brazilian drag queen insists is Santos in drag, though he denies it. In more scandalous sartorial news, a former roommate says that the scarf Santos sported at a Stop the Steal rally was, fittingly, stolen… The Santos story is funny, but a real danger exists that the public might allow its amusement to eclipse the horror of such a candidate reaching office and the consequences for Congress and the American political system’s remaining shreds of repute.

Santos ought to be investigated to see whether he broke any existing laws. He already faces complaints before the House Ethics Committee and Federal Election Commission about his campaign spending, and there’s a larger question about how Santos, who was previously strapped for cash, per his own disclosures, suddenly got the money to loan his campaign $700,000. Brazilian authorities have revived a long-moribund fraud investigation against him there, too. In the meantime, he’s in Congress, where he recently won placement on committees on small business and science, space, and technology, and he may get access to classified information, a privilege afforded to members of the House.

Even if Santos is eventually forced out of office, as seems possible, treating him like a mere joke risks feeding a vicious cycle that will persist after his exit. When clowns get elected, it rightly lowers the esteem in which the public holds Congress; this, in turn, leads voters to be more apt to elect more clowns, which only produces a Congress even less worthy of respect. So go ahead, laugh at George Santos. But when your giggles peter out, don’t let your attention drift away.

It’s important for columnists like Graham to not demonize the LGBTQ community— including drag queens— while laughing at Santos’ behavior. Maebe A. Girl is a legitimate political leader in the Silverlake area and is now a frontrunner in the race to replace Adam Schiff in Congress. She is a drag queen and also a transgender person. But she’s best know as an advocate of a fierce progressive agenda that this ad demonstrates:

I asked Maebe what she makes out of this whole Santos/Kitara thing. She patiently explained it to me like this:

As a trans, non-binary drag performer running for Congress, I’m proud to be and show who I am. The same cannot be said for disgraced Rep. George Santos, or should I say Kitara? The Republican freshman in Congress lied about his résumé to enter office, and is now calling claims that he was a drag performer “categorically false” despite photos and testimony proving otherwise.

Let me be clear that doing drag is not a disqualification for being in Congress— it’s Santos’s hypocrisy for participating in the act while supporting anti-LGBTQIA legislation at state and federal levels. It’s both irresponsible and harmful.

The past few years have seen an unprecedented onslaught of anti-LGBTQIA bills move through various state legislatures, and we’re beginning to see similar bills introduced at the federal level by representatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene. A large number of these bills focus on anti-trans action, such as barring trans people from bathrooms, locker rooms, and athletics based on their trans identity. Drag performances have also been targeted, with the likely-intended consequence of harming trans people as well.

Santos’ support of “Don’t Say Gay” laws disqualifies him from representing the LGBTQIA community-- that’s not what we stand for. The perpetuation of anti-queer rhetoric further harms LGBTQIA folks outside of just the legal system by giving bigots a pass to harass trans people and drag queens by calling them “groomers” and “pedophiles” for simply existing. It’s the kind of rhetoric that leads to fatal violence against our community as seen in the Club Q mass shooting.

OUR drag performer-- a relentless, progressive advocate for the working class! -photo by Emily Eizen

Congress has very few queer representatives as it stands, but Santos’s representation isn’t what the queer community or any community needs. George Santos must resign in disgrace. While the harm has been done, another two years of him being in the spotlight will no doubt bring more harm-- to his own constituents and to the LGBTQIA community he should be defending not vilifying. We need representatives who will work for all of us.

Russell Berman’s Santos story doesn’t mention his life as Kitara at all. His topic was political and how Long Island Republicans want Santos to resign so that he doesn’t contaminate the whole GOP with his stench. He wrote that “Local Republicans are flummoxed that national party leaders, starting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, haven’t joined their united call for Santos to resign. And they see McCarthy’s continued tolerance of Santos as an attempt to hold on to a Republican vote in the near term without enough consideration for whether he’d lose it— and cause Republicans to lose many others— in the longer term. With 2024 in mind, and as the list of Santos’ biographical fabrications grows (seemingly by the day), Nassau County’s GOP machine has treated the congressman-for-now as a boil to be lanced. ‘As far as I’m concerned, he’s nonexistent. I will not deal with him. I will not deal with his office,’ Bruce Blakeman, the Republican who was elected Nassau County executive in 2021, told me. Last week, Blakeman joined a group of local GOP leaders, including county Republican Party Chairman Joseph Cairo and Representative Anthony Garbarino, in demanding that Santos resign. Yet for the moment, the political imperatives of Long Island Republicans no longer align with those of McCarthy, who plainly cannot afford to lose Santos’s vote with such a narrow margin in the House.”

Democrats have already filed a complaint about Santos with the House Ethics Committee, and he is under investigation by federal and local prosecutors in New York who are reportedly looking into whether he committed financial crimes or violated federal campaign-disclosure laws.

Santos has defied calls to resign, and McCarthy might need his vote even more should another House Republican, Representative Greg Steube of Florida, miss an extended period of time after he sustained serious injuries from a 25-foot fall off a ladder earlier this week.

…[Peter] King and others in Nassau County are trying to impress upon McCarthy that the longer he stands by Santos, the more damage he will do to a Republican brand that has been on the rise. “The only reason Kevin McCarthy has the majority is because of the very close marginal seats that Republicans won in New York,” King said. “We can lose all of them in the next election.”

…Santos has almost no incentive to leave of his own accord anytime soon, especially now that Long Island Republicans have all but foreclosed the possibility of his winning renomination to his seat. “He’s not going to have a career. He’s not going to have a public life, and he’s going to be ostracized in his own community,” Blakeman told me. Santos was wealthy enough to lend his campaign $700,000. But his present personal finances are, like so much else about his life, a mystery, so he may need the paychecks that come with a $174,000 annual salary. And his seat could be a crucial bit of leverage in potential negotiations with prosecutors…; resigning his seat, in that scenario, could help him avoid other penalties, including prison time.

As his struggle just to get the speakership demonstrated, McCarthy doesn’t exactly have an ironclad grip on his conference. The Republicans from Nassau County seem to realize that the new speaker has limited sway over Santos. But McCarthy’s decision to protect and even validate Santos’s standing inside Congress is at odds with a party clinging both to its House majority and to its precarious stronghold on Long Island. “I’ve dealt with people with all sorts of issues,” Blakeman told me,” and enabling them is not a good thing.”

One of Santos’ former roommates, Gregory Morey told CBS New that Santos wanted to be in Congress so he could get a pension and health care for the rest of his life. But now even the handful of fascists who have embraced Santos as a fellow misfit are backing away from him, even the bustling hub of East Coast Naziism, the New York Young Republican Club. "'The thing that made him good at being a con man was that he could align himself with whatever group he was addressing,' [Club President Gavin] Wax said. As for that money he gave [a $500 contribution], he added, 'I wish I got it back.'"

The degree to which Santos agrees ideologically with those extreme elements of The New York Young Republican Club is difficult to know. He embraced the group’s endorsement of his fledgling campaign in 2021, with the press release citing his commitment to fighting socialism— and a promise to not take a salary in Congress.

One New York Republican leader granted anonymity to speak freely about party tensions said Santos, who is gay, at times clashed with other members of the club over “values.”

“There were some individuals in that group that don’t support gay marriage, there was a little bit of contention there. George was offended because he didn’t feel like anybody stepped up,” the leader said.

And while some members of the New York Young Republican Club have chronicled meetings with far-right European leaders on social media, Santos largely avoided that issue in public. When Hungary’s autocratic leader, Viktor Orbán, spoke at CPAC in August, Santos joked about him on Twitter— with “no disrespect,” he wrote in the tweet.

But within the city’s GOP circles, it is believed that the group served as a springboard to help the congressman pull off the win in his congressional race this past November. A New York Republican leader, granted anonymity to talk freely about intraparty tensions, said Wax in particular has proved to be a steady ally to Santos through the tumult.

Not enough Santos? Peggy Noonan used her Wall Street Journal column to declare that Santos has got to go, presumably from Congress, although many think he should go back to his native Brazil, especially since he isn’t a U.S. citizen but just someone who scammed the system. She seems his occupation of a Long Island congressional seat as “a daily insult to the American people and a taunt. He is a nut but can’t be dismissed as only that. He is also wicked in that he has for decades abused all around him by waging war on reality. He has stolen, from all who had dealings with him, including voters, a sense of what is true. He has lied about every central fact of his life, purloining achievement, stature and sympathy. He then hoodwinked a congressional district on Long Island whose residents are now effectively without a functioning representative. Seeing the chance to replace a longtime Democrat with a Republican, they gave him solid backing on the assumption that surely he’d been vetted by someone. He hadn’t.”

She wrote, sensibly, that “Like all professional hustlers, Santos seems to enjoy getting away with it. He thinks he’s getting away with it now, marching around Congress trailed by staff— this mamaluke has staff— conferring with whoever will confer with him. ‘I will not be distracted nor fazed,’ he tweeted, denying allegations he performed in drag shows in Brazil. ‘I am working to deliver results.’ ‘I will NOT resign!’ He shouldn’t be in Congress. We all know this. It’s not good enough to say they’re all con men. Even in Congress there are degrees. This one’s a pro, a menace, a total, not partial, fraud. If he has any qualifications for public office they haven’t emerged. He is a bad example for the young: Cheating works. He is an embarrassment to the old. He is an insult to the institution. Getting rid of him will ‘take time,’ we are counseled— ethics investigations, campaign finance probes. But the entire Republican leadership, while not quite embracing him, has been happy to use him. He voted for Kevin McCarthy for speaker. He was appointed to two committees. They are making a mistake. They should stop, and tell him he has to leave. They should press him to resign. They should dissociate themselves from him, ostracize him. They are going this route because they have a majority of five votes and think they can’t afford to lose even one. Especially a particularly malleable one who’ll do anything leadership asks! But in the meantime Mr. Santos is allowed to put his own poisonous imprimatur on all of them, on every initiative and bill, on everything they do. If they can’t do the right thing they should at least be practical. He will be used relentlessly by the Democrats, and the media, to make the Republican conference look like a cabal of fraudsters. In the short term he damages their reputation, in the long he will surely cost them seats. Have a majority of four, not five. Give one up, protect the rest. Get him off the floor and out of America’s sight. And go public with it, show this is where you stand.

Too late for that now. He is-- like QAnon psychopath and anti-Semite Marjorie Traitor Greene and child sex trafficker Matt Gaetz (both of whom have befriended Santos)-- more the face of the GOP, at least outside DC, than McCarthy, Scalise or Emmer.