What does “community” mean when it’s made up of millions of people who don’t agree with — or even like — each other? We sat down on Spain’s Costa del Sol with Scottish drag artist and LGBTQIA+ cultural commentator King Key (Chris Kidd) for a conversation that went well past drag: the gray area between yes and no, why so many in our community stay quiet until an issue hits home, and why publicly changing your mind might be the most credible thing a creator can do right now. There’s a real marketing lesson in here too — the LGBTQ+ audience was never a monolith, and the people brands keep missing are the ones in the middle.
“We may not be friends. We may not like each other. There may be very many situations where we would not want to be in each other’s company. But when it comes to supporting each other, then that is important as a community.”
That’s King Key — the drag persona of Scottish artist, creator and LGBTQIA+ cultural commentator Chris Kidd — and it might be the most useful sentence anyone has said to me about our community all year.
We caught up for #ILoveGay Today from the Costa del Sol in southern Spain, where King Key now lives and performs. What started as a conversation about drag turned into something bigger: what it actually means to represent a “community” made up of millions of people who don’t necessarily agree with, understand, or even like one another.
From Scotland to the Costa del Sol
King Key is a relatively young persona — about two and a half years old — but the performer behind her isn’t. Chris came up through performing arts long before drag entered the picture, and for years assumed drag wasn’t an option.
“I never had the inclination to want to be female presenting as an artist, which put me off doing drag for a long time,” he said, “until I became more aware of the fact that I could do drag without being female presenting — and then it cascaded, and it doesn’t seem to want to stop.”
The move to Spain wasn’t about chasing an audience. He and his partner had wanted to relocate for years, and the Brexit vote turned a someday plan into a now-or-never one. “We realized we had to do it sooner than we had planned, otherwise we may not have been able to do it at all.”
They landed next door to Torremolinos, one of the most gay-centric towns in Spain and home to a sizable American expat community — part of a broader pattern worth watching, as Spain and Portugal keep showing up on the shortlist for LGBTQ+ Americans thinking about a move rather than just a vacation.
He also built and runs his own website, which is genuinely well done. When I complimented it, the answer was very freelancer: “That would be me. The joy of being a freelancer is you have to do everything, my dear.”
The gray area nobody markets to
The heart of our conversation was the thing King Key writes and performs about most: the space between the yes and the no.
“Social media has created a bit of a divide,” he said. “We are made to kind of decide, are we this or are we that. People see us as, is it black, is it white, is it yes or is it no. If you agree with us then you’re one of us, and if you disagree with us then you’re one of them. There’s a lot of gray area in between, and I’m very interested in analyzing that and discussing that.”
This lands squarely in something we run into constantly on the marketing side. There’s a persistent assumption that every LGBTQ+ person votes the same way, reads the same outlets, cares about the same issues with the same intensity, and can be reached with a single message. That’s not the community any of us actually live in.
Yes, there are LGBTQ+ conservatives, and that still surprises people — a whole separate bag to unpack. But the larger and more overlooked group isn’t ideological at all. It’s people who are simply living their lives, not especially focused on politics or on representing a certain way.
King Key is clear-eyed about that, and generous about it too.
“There are a large swathe of people who will not engage with the conversation until it directly affects them. And sometimes that’s not because of a lack of want — sometimes that can be because of a lack of understanding, or a lack of realization of how serious an issue is.”
Accessible, not academic
That read is exactly why his commentary works the way it does.
“I try to make it accessible rather than academic,” he said. “I try to add elements of humor as a drag artist wherever possible, but I do also keep it clear that we’re talking about serious subjects.”
The short-form social posts open the door. The long-form writing on Substack is where he takes the same ideas apart — including his own.
“I’m very aware and proactive in letting people know that this is what I used to think, and this is why I’ve changed my mind — or I may be wrong about this,” he said. “I don’t think there is one correct or incorrect answer to any question. But the more that we actually admit that maybe we don’t know everything, then we can actually start to have conversations that genuinely matter.”
For anyone building an audience in this space right now, that’s a strategy, not just a temperament. Publicly changing your mind is one of the few things left that reliably earns trust.
Three shows, three different jobs
The same thinking runs through the live work, which splits into distinct formats doing distinct jobs.
There’s the big Friday and Saturday drag cabaret — entertainment first, with the ideas tucked inside the jokes. “I poke fun at our community as well as other communities,” he said.
Then there are the solo shows, built around specific issues. The Church of High Kicks runs on Sundays and takes on religion and belief across multiple faiths — not only in relation to LGBTQIA+ people, but in society generally.
And coming next year: Apocalyptic, built entirely around the things people insist are going to end the world. “Two people, two men kissing on telly. A woman deciding not to have children. The things that people get enraged about.”
The goal across all of it is the same, and he names it plainly: “It’s important to be able to get those ideas across to people without making them terrified of the ideas — because if we do, then things like the apathy that you mentioned are just going to get worse.”
Why this matters for brands and destinations
There’s a marketing lesson sitting underneath all of this, and it’s a practical one.
When a brand treats the LGBTQ+ community as a single, uniform audience, it usually produces a single, uniform message — and that message tends to reach the people who are already engaged while sliding right past everyone else. The gray area King Key describes is not a rounding error. It’s a large share of the community, and it’s reached differently: through entertainment, through humor, through creators who lead with craft rather than a position statement.
It’s also a useful reframe on what community support actually requires. Not agreement. Not friendship. Just showing up when it counts — which is exactly the standard a lot of our community has been applying to corporate partners these past few years.
Where to find King Key
Our full conversation is up now on the Pink Media / #ILoveGay YouTube channel. Watch it here.
Touring plans are in the works, and he’s exploring streaming the live shows as well — so if you’re not within reach of the Costa del Sol, that gray area may come to you.
“We May Not Be Friends. We Still Show Up.” — King Key on Drag, Disagreement & the LGBTQ+ Gray Area
“We may not be friends. We may not like each other. There may be very many situations where we would not want to be in each other’s company. But when it comes to supporting each other, then that is important as a community.”
That’s King Key — the drag persona of Scottish artist, creator and LGBTQIA+ cultural commentator Chris Kidd — and it might be the most useful sentence anyone has said to me about our community all year.
We caught up for #ILoveGay Today from the Costa del Sol in southern Spain, where King Key now lives and performs. What started as a conversation about drag turned into something bigger: what it actually means to represent a “community” made up of millions of people who don’t necessarily agree with, understand, or even like one another.
From Scotland to the Costa del Sol
King Key is a relatively young persona — about two and a half years old — but the performer behind her isn’t. Chris came up through performing arts long before drag entered the picture, and for years assumed drag wasn’t an option.
“I never had the inclination to want to be female presenting as an artist, which put me off doing drag for a long time,” he said, “until I became more aware of the fact that I could do drag without being female presenting — and then it cascaded, and it doesn’t seem to want to stop.”
The move to Spain wasn’t about chasing an audience. He and his partner had wanted to relocate for years, and the Brexit vote turned a someday plan into a now-or-never one. “We realized we had to do it sooner than we had planned, otherwise we may not have been able to do it at all.”
They landed next door to Torremolinos, one of the most gay-centric towns in Spain and home to a sizable American expat community — part of a broader pattern worth watching, as Spain and Portugal keep showing up on the shortlist for LGBTQ+ Americans thinking about a move rather than just a vacation.
He also built and runs his own website, which is genuinely well done. When I complimented it, the answer was very freelancer: “That would be me. The joy of being a freelancer is you have to do everything, my dear.”
The gray area nobody markets to
The heart of our conversation was the thing King Key writes and performs about most: the space between the yes and the no.
“Social media has created a bit of a divide,” he said. “We are made to kind of decide, are we this or are we that. People see us as, is it black, is it white, is it yes or is it no. If you agree with us then you’re one of us, and if you disagree with us then you’re one of them. There’s a lot of gray area in between, and I’m very interested in analyzing that and discussing that.”
This lands squarely in something we run into constantly on the marketing side. There’s a persistent assumption that every LGBTQ+ person votes the same way, reads the same outlets, cares about the same issues with the same intensity, and can be reached with a single message. That’s not the community any of us actually live in.
Yes, there are LGBTQ+ conservatives, and that still surprises people — a whole separate bag to unpack. But the larger and more overlooked group isn’t ideological at all. It’s people who are simply living their lives, not especially focused on politics or on representing a certain way.
King Key is clear-eyed about that, and generous about it too.
“There are a large swathe of people who will not engage with the conversation until it directly affects them. And sometimes that’s not because of a lack of want — sometimes that can be because of a lack of understanding, or a lack of realization of how serious an issue is.”
Accessible, not academic
That read is exactly why his commentary works the way it does.
“I try to make it accessible rather than academic,” he said. “I try to add elements of humor as a drag artist wherever possible, but I do also keep it clear that we’re talking about serious subjects.”
The short-form social posts open the door. The long-form writing on Substack is where he takes the same ideas apart — including his own.
“I’m very aware and proactive in letting people know that this is what I used to think, and this is why I’ve changed my mind — or I may be wrong about this,” he said. “I don’t think there is one correct or incorrect answer to any question. But the more that we actually admit that maybe we don’t know everything, then we can actually start to have conversations that genuinely matter.”
For anyone building an audience in this space right now, that’s a strategy, not just a temperament. Publicly changing your mind is one of the few things left that reliably earns trust.
Three shows, three different jobs
The same thinking runs through the live work, which splits into distinct formats doing distinct jobs.
There’s the big Friday and Saturday drag cabaret — entertainment first, with the ideas tucked inside the jokes. “I poke fun at our community as well as other communities,” he said.
Then there are the solo shows, built around specific issues. The Church of High Kicks runs on Sundays and takes on religion and belief across multiple faiths — not only in relation to LGBTQIA+ people, but in society generally.
And coming next year: Apocalyptic, built entirely around the things people insist are going to end the world. “Two people, two men kissing on telly. A woman deciding not to have children. The things that people get enraged about.”
The goal across all of it is the same, and he names it plainly: “It’s important to be able to get those ideas across to people without making them terrified of the ideas — because if we do, then things like the apathy that you mentioned are just going to get worse.”
Why this matters for brands and destinations
There’s a marketing lesson sitting underneath all of this, and it’s a practical one.
When a brand treats the LGBTQ+ community as a single, uniform audience, it usually produces a single, uniform message — and that message tends to reach the people who are already engaged while sliding right past everyone else. The gray area King Key describes is not a rounding error. It’s a large share of the community, and it’s reached differently: through entertainment, through humor, through creators who lead with craft rather than a position statement.
It’s also a useful reframe on what community support actually requires. Not agreement. Not friendship. Just showing up when it counts — which is exactly the standard a lot of our community has been applying to corporate partners these past few years.
Where to find King Key
Our full conversation is up now on the Pink Media / #ILoveGay YouTube channel. Watch it here.
Find King Key at kingkeydrag.com, read the long-form work at kingkeydrag.substack.com, and follow @kingkeydrag across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and Threads. The community space, The Drag Court, lives on Skool.
Touring plans are in the works, and he’s exploring streaming the live shows as well — so if you’re not within reach of the Costa del Sol, that gray area may come to you.