The federally-indicted Republican congressman George Santos of New York has launched a bizarre and seemingly unprompted rant against “drag nuns” on Twitter.
“I don’t usually swear but… The ‘Drag nuns’ can F*** ALL THE WAY OFF! The mockery they cast on the Catholic faith is DAMN offensive and WRONG!” he wrote on Wednesday night.
Mr Santos, a former drag performer himself, didn’t provide a reason for his social media diatribe. But it comes as members of the GOP have slammed the decision to invite a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a drag activist group, to a Pride Month event in the California Assembly. Republicans walked off the floor on Monday in protest, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence garnered nationwide attention last month after the Los Angeles Dodgers hemmed and hawed on whether to invite them for a Pride Month celebration.
After inviting the group, the team went back on that initiative following anti-LGBT+ backlash. After that reaction and the withdrawal of the invitation led to an outpouring of support for the group, the team once again extended an invitation.
The group was founded in San Francisco in 1979 by gay men, employing Christian imagery to reject homophobia in religion and join the struggle against AIDS. They now have hundreds of members all over the globe.
Mr Santos is no stranger to the art of drag. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Mr Santos reportedly performed in drag under the name “Kitara Ravache” at several beauty pageants in Brazil.
In January, Brazilian drag performer Eula Rochard, 58, told Reuters that she believes Mr Santos appeared at a gay pride parade in Niteroi, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, in 2005 and then spotted him at a drag pageant three years later.
“I was young and I had fun at a festival – sue me for having a life,” Mr Santos later told ABC7.
While he defended Catholocism in his latest tweet, it remains unclear if Mr Santos sees himself as part of the faith. In the past, he has described himself as “Jewish,” “Jew-ish,” and “Catholic”.
“I believe we’re all Jewish at the end because Jesus Christ is Jewish,” he once said.
Mr Santos’ outburst at “drag nuns” came as he weathered a development in a different one of his many scandals - with a judge ordering that the names of the people who paid his $500,000 bail following his federal indictment must be revealed.
The New York Representative, who won his seat last year after a failed 2020 bid, pleaded not guilty last month to charges of defrauding his campaign supporters, lying to get unemployment funds, and making false statements on congressional disclosure forms.
On Tuesday, Magistrate Judge Anne Shields ruled that Mr Santos must appeal the decision before 12pm on Friday, or else the names will be public.
Mr Santos’s attorneys said on Monday that the benefactors “truly fear for their health, safety and well being”.
Lawyer Joseph Murray said previously that “my client would rather surrender to pretrial detainment than subject these suretors to what will inevitably come”.
Mr Santos has been charged with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.
