Ex-Mormon drag queen Lady MAGA has become the latest canceled Republican

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Alphus and Omegus
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Ex-Mormon drag queen Lady MAGA has become the latest canceled Republican

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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... 234703303/
The Lady MAGA USA character was created by Ryan Woods, a gay Utah man in his mid 30s. An ex-Mormon and former Democrat, Woods has traced his drag-queen journey in a first-person podcast, as well as though his website, and myriad social media channels. (Woods did not respond to interview requests).

Woods has centered his identity less in sexuality than in nationalism. “Just because I happen to be gay and love to dress up,” he told the right-wing activist Dinesh D’Souza in 2021 podcast, “has nothing to do with my identity as a patriot and a God-fearing constitutionalist Republican.”

A former Eagle Scout, Woods grew up “totally Mormon,” he’s said, attending BYU and even serving a mission in France before coming out at age 22 and leaving the church, and later moving to Massachusetts. ...

These days, the party’s 2024 contenders are competing to be the grand marshal of the anti-queer hate parade. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has embraced crackdowns on drag shows to boost his culture-war cred. Even Donald Trump — who famously filmed a bit with Rudy Giuliani in drag, and invited Caitlyn Jenner to speak at his 2016 nominating convention — has gotten into the act, vowing during a March stump speech in Iowa to punish public schools for pushing “transgender insanity.”

The right-wing’s boogeyman-switcheroo has left its most famous drag star in an untenable position — striving to promote the GOP as a Big Tent for gay conservatives at a moment when party insiders are crusading against all things queer. Lady MAGA offers a cautionary tale that ideological purity on issues like guns, abortion, and small government — even a willingness to blast the “debauchery” of mainstream LGBTQ culture — isn’t enough to carve out a safe space in a party that finds its unity in shared intolerance. ....

The thin strip of territory that Lady MAGA attempted to stake out for cross-dressing conservatives has been swamped by this rising tide of intolerance. Having burned his bridges, foreclosing a return to the mainstream, Woods retreated to higher ground with a movement that’s increasingly hostile to his very existence. ...

But the right-wing onslaught against gender-non-conformance, ultimately appears to be pushing Lady MAGA back toward a new closet, of sorts. In a March 12 Facebook post, Woods wrote that he is hanging up his identity as a “drag queen.”

“I now prefer to call myself a costume artist,” he wrote. “The drag world was one of the ways I could enjoy my talents,” he added, “but they’ve destroyed their credibility with predatory filth.”

Another member of the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party is shocked that the leopard wants to eat his face.

No one loves canceling people more than the radical right.
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