Rep. Mike Collins in drag in his high school yearbook.Piedmont Academy yearbook in 1985.

Carter, whose real name is Earl LeRoy Carter, is seen wearing a long dress and sash in the Robert W. Groves High School yearbook for 1975, the year he graduated from the school in a suburb of Savannah. There is no caption attached to the drag photo, but there is a strong resemblance to Carter’s senior photo in the same yearbook when the two are compared. The congressman was also the subject of a Reddit thread in 2025, where a user posted another photo of Carter in drag from a different yearbook, captioned “Miss ‘Cantelope’ Carter.” The Advocate was unable to independently verify the additional photo.

Robert W. Groves High School yearbook for 1975

Critics point to the men’s hypocrisy of being scandalized by drag when LGBTQ+ people do it, but embracing gender play as harmless fun when they do it.

“Rep. Collins and Rep. Carter are running to represent every Georgian, but they’ve made it clear that they don’t believe LGBTQ+ Georgians are worthy of equal rights,” David Stacy, vice president of government affairs for the Human Rights Campaign, told The Advocate.

Carter, a self-proclaimed “MAGA warrior,” introduced the “Truth in Gender Act” in June 2025, which sought to codify Trump’s executive order that mandated that the U.S. government only recognize two biological sexes, voted in favor of the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” which proposed making it a felony to provide gender-affirming care to minors, and ran campaign ads last summer that showed his disdain for transgender women competing in sports.

“Rep. Buddy Carter introduced a bill to codify President Trump’s heinous anti-trans executive orders, he has voted to force trans youth to be outed, and he voted to allow doctors and parents to be charged with a federal felony with a ten-year penalty for best practice medical care,” Stacey said.

Collins also supported the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” calling gender-affirming care “radical woke ideology,” and has echoed the conservative talking point that transgender women should not compete in women’s sports. He has also blamed a train derailment on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

As recently as March 31, Collins posted a photo of the Trans Am car bearing a Confederate flag license plate from the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit, captioned “Happy Trans Visibility Day to all who celebrate.”

“Rep. Mike Collins has repeatedly voted to yank books out of libraries, tell parents of trans youth what kind of health care their kids may or may not receive, and said Rev. Marianne Budde — the Episcopal bishop who pleaded with President Trump for ‘mercy’ for LGBTQ+ people [at a Washington, D.C. service the day after his January 2025 inauguration] — should be added to a deportation list,” Stacy said.

In a statement to The Advocate, a spokesperson for the Ossoff campaign said that the three Republicans running in the primary are more concerned with attacking the trans community than with what voters actually care about. “Instead of working to find bipartisan solutions on issues impacting Georgians’ lives, like lowering costs at the grocery store or making health care more affordable, Mike Collins, Derek Dooley, and Buddy Carter are shamelessly using trans individuals as a prop for political division. It’s gross and wrong,” the statement said.

In response to viewing the yearbook photos in question, Collins’ communications director Emma Gibson told The Advocate that “Only people whose brains have been rotted by ill-prescribed hormones and the continual over-sexualization of life around them would view a yearbook photo of Rep. Collins and his wife 40 years ago switching clothes for a Homecoming tradition as anything more than lighthearted humor.”

Chris Crawford, a spokesperson for Carter’s office, refused to confirm or deny whether the congressman is in the photos during multiple interactions with The Advocate. Instead, in a text message, Crawford wrote, “You’re playing with fire to run a story without verification.” When asked directly whether Carter denies that the image is of him, Crawford texted, “You’d like us to do your job?”

Drag performer Taylor Alxndr, who is also the co-founder and executive director of the community organization Southern Fried Queer Pride in Georgia, is tired of hypocritical politicians who blame the LGBTQ+ community for all of the ills of society.

“There’s this big bogeyman of trans people, even though statistically, historically, and factually, trans people pose no harm to the American economy, pose no harm to cisgender people, especially cisgender women,” Alxndr told The Advocate. “This idea that trans women are following or trying to attack or harm cisgender women in restrooms, it’s all just a big distraction from the actual evil that plagues a lot of the country, and it’s these politicians and people who support them.”

Carter and Collins are far from the first “family values” Republican politicians to dress in drag while spewing hateful rhetoric about queer people and fighting for anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Vice President JD Vance, former North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, disgraced gay former New York Rep. George Santos, and disbarred Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani have all had their pasts dressing in drag come to light.

”Drag is a centuries-old art form that is not limited to LGBTQ people, but which has an undisputed history of pride and visibility in the LGBTQ community that should be uplifted,” a GLAAD spokesperson told The Advocate. “It’s a no-brainer that anyone who participates in this part of LGBTQ culture should support basic protections for LGBTQ people. Anything less is hypocrisy.”

The GLAAD spokesperson added, “Recent attacks on family-friendly drag shows and performers are a baseless distraction from real action that will help families, like affordability and health care. Rep. Collins and Rep. Carter should shift their focus from any anti-LGBTQ animus to family-forward policies that uplift and protect all families.”

Alxndr said that these men may have originally enjoyed dressing in drag, but because of “familial pressure, religious pressure, or political pressure,” the “very simple, fun, nonsensical experience of them performing or dressing up in drag gets changed into something that’s evil or harmful,” and that’s when they tend to start targeting the LGBTQ+ community.