This drag family is out and proud deep in Pennsylvania coal country

SHAMOKIN, Pa. — Deep in Pennsylvania coal country, the Daniels drag family is up to some sort of exuberance almost every weekend.

Here two very old traditions mingle — and mostly happily, it seems, in contrast to the fierce political winds ripping at drag performances and the broader rights of LGBTQ people in red states from Utah and Texas to Tennessee and Florida.The other, back to before Shakespearian times, is drag, a loud, proud and seismically flamboyant artistic expression of gender fluidity. Not plain, not simple, but also bedrock, rising above ground only in culturally adventurous cities.

Harpy Daniels, Trixy’s twin, is a U.S. Navy sailor who’s had three deployments on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. Soon that seaman, Petty Officer 1st Class Joshua Kelley, who just reenlisted, moves from a base in Norfolk, Virginia, to one in Spain, with plans to pack a wig “and maybe one or two cute outfits but nothing over the top” for Harpy-style shore leave.

“I still was not out at this point,” Alexus says. “I wasn’t even sure if I was gay. I knew I was attracted to boys and loved all things feminine! I kept this side of me to myself and my best friends growing up, who really didn’t see anything strange about it.”Carolyn Kaster / AP file “I’m not a man,” Kelley says. “I never will see myself as a man. And I don’t see myself as a woman, either. But I see myself as beyond that.”

A waitress pauses with plates of food as drag queen Harpy Daniels poses for a photograph before the "Daniels Family Values" drag show at the Heritage Restaurant in Shamokin, Pa., on April 16, 2022.Until 2011, the armed forces applied the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which accepted LGBTQ+ people only if they stayed mum about their sexual orientation.

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