“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. Events like the drag queen story hour have come in for particular criticism, as drag has become a fascination and obsession for conservatives. Republicans and rightwing media personalities have accused drag performers of intending to indoctrinate and “groom” children through their performances. “But it does make life really hard on a daily basis for people just trying to live their lives.” “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. Such legislation is often disingenuously billed by conservatives as necessary to protect children, but LGBTQ+ advocates say that is a smokescreen. North Carolina, like other GOP-dominated states around the country, has passed laws which target the LGBTQ+ community, including laws which target trans youth. Grant, 41, is based in North Carolina, where the Republican-led house has proposed its own anti-drag law. But at the end of the day, Pride is Pride, and the community turned out and it was just a very joyful, celebratory event. Yes, we had been through that kind of rollercoaster of a week. So we were able to move forward and it made the celebration all that much sweeter. “We got the restraining order just the day before maybe. “It just felt like a very touch-and-go week, whether we were even gonna be able to have the event,” Grant said. They sued to allow the festival to go ahead, and a second judge ruled against the law. That prompted a legal scramble from the ACLU and Flamy Grant, a drag performer scheduled to appear at Blount Pride. 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. 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”.ĭespite Parker’s ruling, some Tennessee officials were determined to enforce the new law. 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”. ![]() In June, however, a Trump-appointed judge ruled against it, following a lawsuit by Friends of George’s, a Memphis-based LGBTQ+ theater company.įriends of George’s members celebrate after a judge temporarily blocked a Tennessee law restricting drag performances. Lee signed the law despite a photo emerging in February showing him dressed in drag as a younger man. 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”. 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. 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. ![]() 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. 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.įlorida 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. 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. But the Republican-led anti-drag crusade – seen by activists as a front for further attacks on trans people – has run into problems.
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