The star featured on season 5 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. (Getty)
The Mayor of San Francisco, California, has appointed a RuPaul’s Drag Race star as the head of the city’s Trans Initiatives Office.
Mayor London Breed announced on 2 May via a press release that Honey Mahogany – who appeared on season five of RuPaul’s Drag Race – has been appointed as the new Director of the Office of Transgender Initiatives in San Francisco.
In 2020, Mahogany became the first Black trans person to win an elected post in the state of California when she announced her candidacy to be the chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, according to the Bay Area Reporter.
But now, Mahogany has started her new role on 6 May at the Office of Transgender Initiatives.
“Born and raised in San Francisco, Mahogany has advocated for justice and equity for the LGBTQ+ community for more than two decades, many as a community activist,” the statement began. “As a social worker, she has championed initiatives to address the needs of people living with HIV, people of colour, youth, and the unhoused.”
The statement also told how the former drag performer “served trans and gender nonconforming youth as an outreach worker in residential settings and organised trans community members” when she launched the city’s Transgender District.
“Mahogany is also a founding queen of Drag Story Hour and, recently, played a critical role in saving The Stud, an iconic gay bar in San Francisco, of which she is a co-owner, co-founder of the Stud Collective, and an active member of its board.”
Speaking of her new role, Mahogany called it an “honour”. She added: “I am grateful to Mayor Breed for the opportunity to take on this role in this first-of-its-kind office and to fight for my community at this pivotal time in our nation’s history. After two decades of community-based work and legislative experience, I look forward to leveraging all I have learned over the years in service of this office and the entire transgender, gender non-conforming, intersex, and 2-spirit (TGNCI2S) community.
“I’m especially excited to be leading an extraordinary team of trans staff at the Office of Transgender Initiatives (OTI), and to work alongside longtime community leaders to continue our fight for equity and to ensure that San Francisco continues to be a sanctuary city for the trans community,” Mahogany concluded.