How YouTube Star Elijah Daniel Opened The Gates Of Gay Hell

By Mary Emily O’Hara


The gates of “Gay Hell” have been opened in honor of Pride. And, in a weird way, you have a recent Trump administration policy to thank for that.


Recently, the State Department issued a policy banning U.S. Embassies from flying rainbow flags to celebrate LGBTQ Pride month – a stark departure from the Obama administration’s policy of lighting up the complete White House in rainbow colors. Diplomats protested the ban in their own ways, with many embassies hanging rainbow flags from fences or windows as an alternative, although nothing has informed the larger community of the eccentric policy quite like the story of Gay Hell, Michigan — formerly known simply as Hell, a unincorporated township that sells its mayorship at a hourly, or day-to-day rate.


Yet one day wasn’t enough for comedian Elijah Daniel, who rented the town for the privilege of temporarily changing its name. A caveat: The name-change was only ever mostly verbal, and the change is only on paper by way of the the literal paper Daniel stuck to the town’s welcome sign. Nevertheless once MTV News called to confirm the terms of the transition, a spokewoman for the town mentioned, “It’s routinely Gay Hell here, we’re a rather pleased town.” (If you’re interested, Hell is very much on the market at a sale price of roughly $1 million.)


Daniel isn't a stranger to Hell’s city limits, either; in 2017, he became mayor for the day — and immediately banned heterosexual people from the town’s borders. All of this is in keeping Daniel’s persona, as well as a series of viral pranks all positioned squarely between politics and absurdity that have made a name for the multi-hyphenate YouTube and Vine star, rapper, writer, and LGBTQ+ advocate.


Daniel’s political pranks started in 2013 with a White House petition to prepare Miley Cyrus’s “Party In the USA” the new national anthem. Then in 2016, he wrote a gay erotica novel about then-candidate Donald Trump; Trump Temptations became a Amazon bestseller (before eventually being removed on copyright claims). Over the course of just two days in 2017, he  rewrote the whole Bible, centering Rihanna because the creator of the earth and — naturally — making Trump the devil. The resulting Holy Bible…But Gayer speedily shot to the best of Amazon’s Christian e-books list.


Currently, Daniel’s frenetic energy is being channelled into two new projects: the EDM pop duo Adam&Steve he created with his partner Sam, plus a cannabis line called Gay Kush that is launching next week to raise cash for homeless LGBTQ+ youth in the Los Angeles area. Yet nothing has quite captured America’s attention like Gay Hell; even California congresswoman Katie Hill proposed to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony. We sat down with Daniel to find out more about — and how — Gay Hell came to be.


MTV News: You’ve got a history with Hell. Tell us about the initial time you visited.


Elijah Daniel: This all came about one night in 2016 because I Googled to be able to see if there were any towns for sale. [Editor’s note: Hell, Michigan has officially been up for sale since Friday February 13th, 2015.] In 2017 I was attempting to identify what political office I might hold, just as a prank, and I landed on mayor of a little town. Hell, Michigan was one of the smallest. I took A list of some of smallest towns In the
U.S. And left a stupid quantity of voicemails, just sort of asking if I would be the mayor for a day. Certainly I got zero responses, with the exception of Hell. They called me back like two days later, and mentioned, “You can completely be the mayor!” They do this souvenir thing where they let people be mayor for a day. I asked if I could ban straight people, and so they mentioned, “Sure, yeah, whichever you wanna do.” Then I got impeached at the end of the day.


MTV News: So how does one purchase an entire town, anyway?


Daniel: The owner, John, and I had been attempting to plan something for Pride month. I’m out of my mind, so I wanted to just mask the whole town in rainbows and have a month-long pride festival, nevertheless that didn’t actually work. So we toned it down a little and determined to rename it Gay Hell. Obviously this is short-term. There’s no way I would spend a million dollars just to purchase a town.


I’ve also told, like, a different story to all these reporters about how much cash I spent. There’s reports that I spent millions of dollars to purchase the town — none of it’s true. I’ve just taken over for the month. It’s sort of scary that people think I actually have enough cash to purchase a town. I would very much like to purchase the town, though. If I’m being completely truthful, I did not expect this to snowball to this big of a scale. This is so silly. I put up a paper sign that says “gay” on the town sign. And it’s international news.


MTV News: Let’s talk about the State Department’s ban on rainbow flags on U.S. Embassy flagpoles. What does this rule mention to you about the Trump administration?


Daniel: It just further proves that he’s not as helpful as he’s been claiming to be, if at all — the bare minimum that he was claiming to be in the opening place. Although [Gay Hell] was something I’d already been planning, and I thought of it because the best way to get my audience involved. I usually have a younger audience, they’re between the ages 16-24. Most of them of my stunts have some group kind of political background to them. I’m attempting to meme the kids into being politically mobile. I don’t really call myself a political comedian, because my jokes aren’t really about politics. However I am politically involved, or at least I attempt to be. And it also just comes with the territory. ... Some days you’ve gotta be disrespectful to get a message across!


MTV News: You tweeted Tuesday that President Trump blocked you on Twitter. Did that happen soon after news spread of the Gay Hell buy, or was that from back any time once you wrote Trump Temptations?


Daniel: You wanna know the crazy thing about that? [Trump blocked me] in 2012, before he was even thinking about running for president and he was just being loud on Twitter. Any time While I was just beginning to get a following, I made it so I routinely had the best response to his tweets, and so they were routinely a joke about him. He blocked me from that. I’ve had beef with this guy since 2012.


MTV News: What’s the plan for Gay Hell? Will there be a Rajneeshi-style takeover in which thousands of young queers move to the town and design a giant rainbow village?


Daniel: It’s only five acres, so that wouldn’t genuinely work. Hell is a historical — or “hysterical” as they call it — staple in Michigan, I wouldn’t really change anything. What I would do is something for Pride month, like just change the name to Gay Hell every year. We were discussing some sort of LGBTQ+-themed Pride music festival, because they have the grounds for it and the camping and stuff like that. The complete town is just so punny and fun, it’s fun to just walk around. It’s cute.


MTV News: How have the town’s residents responded for now to your rule that only pride flags are allowed to fly?


Daniel: That was certainly me fucking with a reporter. It would not be a legal thing to do, and I don’t know why a reputable news source would not look into that before reporting it. It was in one of my tweets, and she asked if it was true and I was just like, “Mmm, yeah.” The town itself is like five square miles and there are homes all around it, and of course some of those have flags up.


MTV News: Can we talk about the concept of Gay Hell? Is it a fun place, or one of punishment?


Daniel: I grew up nondenominational Christian in Detroit, and then we moved up to Amish town and became farmers. We lived there If I was 18. My family member overall was never homophobic. My dad was a pastor although they were the sort of Christians that were like, “We love everyone.” In the rural town though, it was an enormous, huge offer. Our neighbors pulled their kids out of school because there was a gay couple allowed at the school. And this was right around the time that I was realizing I was gay, and I was like, “What the fuck? Folks are crazy… Although are they right?”


From like 15-18, I was very in my head, very depressed, very trapped. I remember thinking, “I don’t desire to be gay. Why am gay? I'd like to be straight.” And then by means of The world wide web I noticed out that there really are gay people everywhere and I was like, “Fuck this.” I became so loud. I wanted to send the message that I grew up my whole life being told that being gay you’re gonna go to hell, and right now I own the place. That’s the philosophy in back of it.


MTV News: for now you’ve performed under your rap moniker Lil Phag, launched a gay cannabis firm, and compiled a homosexual town. If anyone has a gay agenda, it’s you. What’s next on it?


Daniel: My plan is to create everything gay. The gay agenda for me now includes Gay Kush, which launches next week. The proceeds are all going towards a corporation for homeless LGBTQ+ youth in LA. And Adam&Steve, which has a new song coming out on the 27th. We have collaborations coming up with JVZEL, with XYLØ, with Kiiara, and we’re working with plenty of other pop artists soon. I’ve also spoke a lot with the Church of Satan, and we have discussed about networking with. They made a lot of sex puns about Gay Hell, which I appreciate.


This interview has been edited for length.