DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland’s top drag queen, Miss Panti Bliss, has driven a stiletto heel through this nation’s long-running debate on gay rights. Panti has riled up conservative Catholics and won global admirers in a social media tour de force that is dominating Irish water-cooler talk.

How and why has Panti — a.k.a. 45-year-old Rory O’Neill — become a YouTube sensation in a dozen languages, thanks to a single, celebrated speech on anti-gay prejudice in Ireland? AP explains.