Struggling to meet their recruiting goals for fiscal year 2023, U.S. Naval leadership has found whom they believe to be the perfect person to increase the branch’s ranks: Drag Queen Harpy Daniels.
According to a Daily Caller report, the Navy brought on Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley — an active-duty drag queen who goes by the stage name Harpy Daniels and identifies as non-binary — to be a “Navy Digital Ambassador.” The Digital Ambassador initiative, which ran from October 2022 to March 2023, was reportedly “designed to explore the digital environment to reach a wide range of potential candidates” for military recruitment, according to a Navy representative.
In November, Kelley announced on Instagram the Navy had invited him to become the branch’s first “Digital Ambassador.” During his announcement video, Kelley highlighted his experience performing in drag for the Navy as early as 2018 and his new role as a so-called “leader” and “advocate” for individuals who were allegedly “oppressed for years in the service.”
“From joining to 2016 and being able to share my drag experience on my off time with my fellow sailors has been a blessing,” Kelley wrote. “This experience has brought me so much strength, courage and ambition to continue being an advocate and representation of queer sailors!”
According to a Navy representative who spoke with The Daily Caller, the Digital Ambassador program “concluded in April, and the Navy is now evaluating the program to consider what form it will take in the future.”
The Navy’s
