Trump Campaign Could Be Sued by Drag Queen
Pattie Gonia, a drag queen and environmental activist, has threatened to sue the Trump campaign for using her image without her permission.
A drag queen featured in a Trump attack ad against Kamala Harris is considering filing a lawsuit against the former president’s campaign for using her image without permission.
As Metro Weekly previously reported, the ad attacks Harris for supporting gender-affirming care to transgender prisoners. It features clips and photos of Harris interspersed with interviews she’s given, pictures of Biden administration officials, and a video of her posing for a photo with a drag queen during a 2022 Pride Month event.
The spot is intended to sway Americans uncomfortable with gender nonconformity and transgender visibility into voting for former President Donald Trump.
“Kamala’s for they/them,” a narrator says, mocking nonbinary pronouns. “President Trump is for you.”
The drag performer in the ad, Pattie Gonia, who creates short-form environmental activism content on social media, has denounced the spot, according to NBC News.
“Is this seriously the best they’ve got?” the drag queen said in a video posted to social media in which she is dressed as the Statue of Liberty. “No, the Trump campaign did not have my permission to use my name or likeness. Yes, we are reviewing our legal options, and yes, I’m going to do what queer people always do — turn our pain into something positive.”
Pattie Gonia — whose real name is Wyn Wiley — appealed to her over 690,000 Instagram followers and more than 460,000 followers on TikTok, urging them to contribute to an online fundraiser for two pro-LGBTQ advocacy groups: Point of Pride, which provides financial support to transgender and nonbinary individuals seeking health care, including gender-affirming care, and Trans Lifeline, a grassroots nonprofit that runs a support hotline for trans individuals and provides microgrants to organizations supporting the trans community.
The drag queen touted the fundraiser, which raised $15,000, as a way to defy the Trump campaign by throwing resources behind a cause that MAGA hates while also supporting members of the trans and nonbinary communities.
Pattie Gonia ended the video by encouraging her followers to “make America gay again.”
Some doubt Wiley has any legal basis for a lawsuit, as political speech is protected by the First Amendment, and the video or still footage Pattie Gonia was taken at a public event.
Additionally, the ad does not say anything explicitly defamatory about Wiley or Pattie Gonia, making it less likely that a lawsuit seeking damages would be successful.
The issue at the crux of the attack ad is Harris’s previously stated support for gender-affirming care, including surgical care, for transgender prisoners, which she revealed in responses to an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire during her bid for the 2020 presidential nomination.
Trump attempted to seize on the questionnaire response as evidence of Harris being “far Left” and out of step with most Americans, who are not supportive of transgender rights except in the abstract, according to public polls.
During their debate, Trump declared Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens who are in prison.” The charge also did not harm Harris as much as the former president appears to have expected, partly due to the non sequitur nature of Trump’s comment, and partly due to the fact that most debate watchers are not obsessed with up-to-the-minute coverage of political issues.
The Harris campaign has largely dodged the issue, refusing to comment on the Trump attack ad and downplaying her previous responses to the ACLU questionnaire, with a campaign spokesperson noting that the vice president’s stance on gender-affirming care is “not what she is proposing or running on.”
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