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Children gather to hug drag queen Brigitte Bandit after a drag time story hour
at the Little Gay Shop on 26 August 2023 in Austin, Texas. Photograph: Brandon
Bell/Getty Images
Children gather to hug drag queen Brigitte Bandit after a drag time story hour
at the Little Gay Shop on 26 August 2023 in Austin, Texas. Photograph: Brandon
Bell/Getty Images
LGBTQ+ rights



‘SUBTLE AND SINISTER’: REPUBLICANS’ ANTI-DRAG CRUSADE SEEN AS ASSAULT ON LGBTQ+
RIGHTS

Hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ laws were introduced in 2023, including bans on drag
shows, but many have been struck down


Adam Gabbatt
@adamgabbatt
Tue 19 Sep 2023 06.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 19 Sep 2023 07.02 EDT
 * 
 * 
 * 



At the beginning of 2023, drag came under attack.

Nashville elects Tennessee’s first openly transgender politician
Read more


Tennessee, Texas and Montana all passed laws which would specifically ban drag
artists from performing in certain public spaces – the latest part of a
conservative culture war that has seen books banned from schools and libraries
around the country and rights stripped from the LGBTQ+ community.

But the Republican-led anti-drag crusade – seen by activists as a front for
further attacks on trans people – has run into problems.

In each of those states, judges, including one appointed by Donald Trump, have
blocked the laws after lawsuits from drag queens and civil rights groups. On
Thursday, a judge in Texas extended a block on the state’s drag ban from taking
effect, setting up a hearing for a permanent injunction later in September.



Florida has also seen a law restricting drag shows blocked, while in Alabama a
proposed bill was quietly dropped after hundreds of people protested at the
state’s capitol.

While Republicans say they will continue trying to pass the drag-ban bills, the
failure so far has given tentative hope that the right wing’s war on LGBTQ+
people is running into trouble.

Tennessee was the first state in the country to pass a law placing strict limits
on drag shows, when the state’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, signed the
legislation into law on 2 March.

The law banned “male or female impersonators” from performing in public spaces,
which would include Pride parades on public property, or in a location where it
can be viewed by minors. The wording was criticized by the ACLU, which told the
WPLN radio station the law is a “subtle and sinister way to further criminalize
just being trans”.

Lee signed the law despite a photo emerging in February showing him dressed in
drag as a younger man.

In June, however, a Trump-appointed judge ruled against it, following a lawsuit
by Friends of George’s, a Memphis-based LGBTQ+ theater company.


Friends of George’s members celebrate after a judge temporarily blocked a
Tennessee law restricting drag performances. Photograph: Karen Pulfer
Focht/Reuters

Thomas Parker, a US district judge nominated by Trump in 2017, was critical of
the legislation in his ruling, describing it as “unconstitutionally vague and
substantially overbroad”. He noted that under the bill’s language a woman
performing in an Elvis Presley costume could be punished because she would be
considered a “male impersonator”.



Despite Parker’s ruling, some Tennessee officials were determined to enforce the
new law. In August, a prosecutor in Blount county, in east Tennessee, announced,
at extremely short notice, that he planned to enforce the anti-drag law against
a Pride festival.

That prompted a legal scramble from the ACLU and Flamy Grant, a drag performer
scheduled to appear at Blount Pride. They sued to allow the festival to go
ahead, and a second judge ruled against the law.

“It just felt like a very touch-and-go week, whether we were even gonna be able
to have the event,” Grant said.

“We got the restraining order just the day before maybe. So we were able to move
forward and it made the celebration all that much sweeter. Yes, we had been
through that kind of rollercoaster of a week. But at the end of the day, Pride
is Pride, and the community turned out and it was just a very joyful,
celebratory event. I’m so glad that we got to do it.”

Grant, 41, is based in North Carolina, where the Republican-led house has
proposed its own anti-drag law. North Carolina, like other GOP-dominated states
around the country, has passed laws which target the LGBTQ+ community, including
laws which target trans youth. Such legislation is often disingenuously billed
by conservatives as necessary to protect children, but LGBTQ+ advocates say that
is a smokescreen.

“This new wave of reinvigorated bigotry – but bigotry that’s masked in this fake
concern for children, and fake concern for morals of society or however they
frame it – is not going to be successful, of course,” Grant said.

“But it does make life really hard on a daily basis for people just trying to
live their lives.”

Republicans and rightwing media personalities have accused drag performers of
intending to indoctrinate and “groom” children through their performances.
Events like the drag queen story hour have come in for particular criticism, as
drag has become a fascination and obsession for conservatives.

“It’s puzzling because drag has been an art form celebrated for centuries and
across cultures, from Shakespeare to military bases, bridal showers to bingo,”
said Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO and president of Glaad, the LGBTQ+ advocacy
organization.

> This new wave of reinvigorated bigotry – bigotry that’s masked in this fake
> concern for children – is not going to be successful

Drag performer Flamy Grant

“If you’ve seen Mrs Doubtfire, you’ve seen drag, to no negative impact on
anyone.”



Ellis said the emerging war on drag performers could be seen as part of the
ongoing rightwing hostility to transgender people, as some conservatives
ignorantly or disingenuously link drag performers with trans individuals.

“Since the nationwide win for same-sex couples’ freedom to marry in 2015,
anti-LGBTQ extremists have for the most part abandoned their fight against
marriage and now turned their attention to targeting transgender Americans,
their healthcare, access to public spaces, even just talking about who they are
and the pronouns they use,” Ellis said.

“This makes drag an obvious target for those who inaccurately conflate being
transgender to being a drag performer. These baseless drag bans attempt to
erase, shame or otherwise make it harder for LGBTQ people, and especially
transgender people, to be themselves and to celebrate their communities and art
forms.”

Each of the anti-drag laws introduced in 2023 seem to share vague language about
what exactly defines drag.

In Montana, an anti-drag law restricted performers who adopt “flamboyant”,
“parodic” or “glamorous” personas from public places where children are present.
A judge temporarily blocked the law in July, ruling that the law “will
disproportionately harm not only drag performers, but any person who falls
outside traditional gender and identity norms”.


A crowd cheers for performers on stage in the HomeTown Drag Spectacular at the
Boise Pride festival. Photograph: Idaho Statesman/TNS

An anti-drag law was introduced in the Alabama house of representatives by
Republican representatives Arnold Mooney, Jamie Kiel, Scott Stadthagen, Mack
Butler, Jim Carns and Chris Sells earlier this year. The bill made it illegal to
perform drag, and perform other acts, in a public space where minors are
present.



The sponsors, who are all men, seemingly let their imaginations run wild when
they drafted the bill. As well as drag queens, the legislation ruled
specifically against “sado-masochism” in a breathy passage that detailed “the
binding or physical restraining of a person who is nude or clad in
undergarments”.

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The drafters apparently gave less thought to the potential response to their
proposed law. Hundreds of people, some in drag, marched to the Alabama capitol
in protest. The bill did not make it into law, although it could be picked up
again in the future.

“It is very dangerous, what they’re doing as a whole. Because they really are
attacking who we are as people,” said Champagne Munroe, a Mobile, Alabama-based
drag performer.

> It is very dangerous, what they’re doing as a whole. Because they really are
> attacking who we are as people

Drag performer Champagne Munroe

“It’s disheartening and it’s dangerous to our wellbeing. We all have very
limited time here on this blue ball, and we’re all just trying to get through it
the best way we can.”


Champagne Munroe. Photograph: Courtesy Champagne Munroe

Texas passed a law in July banning “sexually oriented performances” – which the
state’s lieutenant governor defined as drag shows – in the presence of anyone
under 18. Businesses which violated the law are punishable by fines of up to
$10,000, while drag performers could be sentenced to up to a year in jail.

As restaurants and bars in Texas prepared to hold their last drag shows, the law
was blocked by a judge, and could be overturned permanently later this month.

Brigitte Bandit, 31, gained attention online after she twice spoke out, in drag,
at the Texas capitol against the law. She said the wave of legislation against
drag, and against the trans community, was dangerous.



“It’s really caused a lot of hatred here in the state that we’re seeing more and
more of,” Bandit said. “I think by our lawmakers listening to these kinds [of
voices] they’re just legitimizing them and making them more prominent and
they’re spreading this hate.”

Although the law is on hold, Bandit said she had experienced different, more
negative attitudes since the ruling. When she performs, she will now change at
the venue rather than travel in drag, while after her testimony she received
death threats online.



“We’ve seen this kind of rhetoric being spread before in the past. In the 70s
they were trying to claim that gay people were pedophiles. But we’ve gotten
through it before, so that kind of gives me some hope that we can do better and
hopefully have a better future,” Bandit said.

Kara Foxx-Paris, who has been performing drag for more than 25 years, was among
those whose livelihood was threatened. She criticized “hypocrisy” from the
Republican-dominated legislature that passed the drag law.

There was no Republican clamor, Foxx-Paris said, for legislation to restrict
football teams from employing cheerleaders to perform in front of crowds
containing children, or efforts to stop the restaurant chain Hooters from
encouraging its waitresses to wear revealing attire.

“There’s all these things out there where the girls are scantily clad, and just
as sexy, if not more, than a lot of drag performances. There’s all these things
existing, and yet none of that has ever been attacked.”

Drag was targeted, Foxx-Paris said, because it’s part of the LGBTQ+ community.

> A huge part of the conservative side is trying to take away rights from us,
> and do whatever they can to abolish us for existing

Drag performer Kara Foxx-Paris


“And a huge part of the conservative side is trying to limit, take away rights
from us, and do whatever they can to basically abolish us for existing,” she
said.

A lawsuit has stayed the Texas law for now, but performers there and elsewhere
worry that the right wing will not give up its crusade against drag and the
LGBTQ+ community as a whole.

In the first three months of the year at least 417 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were
introduced in state legislatures, according to the ACLU, while in June the Human
Rights Campaign issued a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans.

There were 161 protests and threats targeting drag events between early 2022 and
March 2023, including at the Blount Pride celebrations in Tennessee, according
to Glaad.

With threats continuing, Flamy Grant, whose lawsuit allowed the Blount county
event to go ahead, said the way to protect LGBTQ+ people was “allyship” from
others who may not be part of the community.

“And allyship is not just a tweet or a Facebook post, or just saying: ‘Yeah, I’m
an affirming person,’” she said.

“Allyship is standing with us at these moments when we’ve got protesters showing
up to our events, when we’ve got elected officials, and district attorneys, and
police, and the courts coming for us. That is the thing that is going to really
help us turn the tide – for people to see that it’s not just queer folks
standing here demanding our dignity, there are people who love us everywhere.”

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I was hoping you would
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