The LGTBI community has become the favorite target of the extreme right in the United States. Parallel to the legislative avalanche initiated against trans people, which has already banned gender-affirming treatments in four states, a new legal battle has landed in state parliaments dominated by Republicans: shows starring drag queens.
The governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, signed a law last Friday that prohibits these performances in public spaces or in places where there may be minors. The southern state has become the first to approve this type of legislation, which is already under discussion in a dozen other states and which numerous human rights organizations see as an unconstitutional attack on freedom of expression and a criminalizing practice of queerness. .
Specifically, the law prohibits “adult cabaret performances” performed by “topless dancers, go-go dancers, strippers, and male or female impersonators who offer performances that appeal to lewd interest,” that is, that provide a type of entertainment “harmful to minors”. The objective, according to the promoter of the law, Jack Johnson, is to “protect children” from “sexually explicit” content. That is why it is prohibited on “public property” and in places where the show “could be seen by a person who is not an adult.”
This ambiguous language is specifically designed for the pursuit of drag. Although the text does not refer to “drag queens” explicitly, “it uses an extremely vague and old-fashioned term – male or female impersonators – typical of the 60s, with which it demonstrates a desire to intimidate and not respond to reality,” explains Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, a professor of gender studies at the University of Michigan who has been a transvestite for more than ten years.
In addition, this language puts drag shows on the same level as others that are more explicitly erotic, such as striptease. “This law assumes that any act of drag appeals to a supposed lascivious interest. And it is presented as a defense of minors, so it is suggesting that we are a social threat”, laments the professor.
“This is retrograde and deeply conservative thinking, typical of a fascist dictatorship, which only seeks to generate fear and criminalize a job, which on many occasions is the main source of income and which is nothing more than a form of artistic expression,” he says.
Those who break the new legislation will be charged with a minor offense, facing fines of up to $2,500 and one year in jail. But if they repeat the crime, they could be punished with up to six years in prison. The law will enter into force on July 1 and constitutes a new attack against the drag community, which is already suffering strong repression at the social level.
Just last year there were more than 140 attacks and threats against drag shows in up to 47 states. In one of them, in Tulsa (Oklahoma), they even threw a Molotov cocktail at a store where a drag event was taking place. Better known was the case of the Q club, in Colorado Springs, where five people died and 18 were injured due to a shooting at an LGTBI club where a drag show was taking place.
A new attack on the collective
Its approval has shocked the drag community in Tennessee and has put the LGTBI community on alert throughout the country, which is suffering continuous attacks from the legislatures of red states, such as Texas or Florida, where more than 300 parliamentary initiatives have already been registered. anti-LGBTI. In addition to drag shows, “this law could be used against transgender and non-binary people simply for wanting to live their lives in public,” warns elDiario.es Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, a local support group for community.
Trans people “could be accused of being male or female impersonators, as defined by the law, thus exposing them to even more harassment than they already experience,” Sanders explains.
According to the latest report from The Trevor Project, a crisis community support organization, 58% of transgender and non-binary youth in Teennessee considered committing suicide in the past year and 1 in 4 (25%) he tried to take his own life. The organization’s director of legal and political affairs, Casey Pick, assures elDiario.es that “this law will only further stigmatize a group of youths who deserve to be loved and supported for who they are.”
The sources consulted agree that the entry into force of this anti-drag law will have a deterrent effect on shows and even other types of activities where drag queens participate, such as storytelling spaces for young children, which have become popular in some US bookstores. .
“Even if you know that your activity is not illegal under the new law, you will decide not to carry it out for fear of being arrested,” says Chris Geidner, a legal analyst who specializes in LGTBI legislation. “Appealing a court case in the US entails a significant cost of time, money and energy that many will decide not to assume or simply cannot do so.”
The upcoming legal battle
These types of laws are part of the legislative agenda of Republicans in 12 other states: Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia. In all of them the law is pending in at least one of the two chambers of Congress. When approved, they will receive demands from organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which has already announced its intention to go to court. According to Geidner, who is also the creator of the Law Dork blog, drag shows and reading hours “are part of free speech and association and are protected by the First Amendment, so these lawsuits have strong arguments.” .
It also considers unconstitutional the laws approved, for the moment, in four republican states that prohibit doctors from performing gender change procedures on minors. So far in 2023, six laws have been approved against the LGTBI community and five of them have been directed at trans people. The latest was passed in Tennessee, which signed another rule along with the anti-drag law that will prevent minors from accessing gender-affirming drugs or surgery.
Geidner has no doubt that this wave of anti-LGBTI legislation across the country is contrary to the Constitution and its founding principle of liberty. In fact, superior courts have already struck down two laws, in Arkansas and Alabama, that tried to limit this type of treatment. But now it is not so clear that the lawsuits, as they are appealed to higher levels, will be able to overthrow these laws: “We are before the most conservative Supreme Court in many years. Last year it struck down Roe v Wade (the ruling protecting the federal right to abortion), which had a precedent of 49 years. I can’t say for sure that they won’t do the same with the precedent that protects trans people and drag queens.”
“A false moral panic”
La Fountain-Stokes, who is also an author of the study Translocas: the politics of Puerto Rican drag and trans performance, has noticed an increase in intimidation towards his community in recent years. “In the US, the right is using fascist ideology to particularly intimidate transgender people, but also any LGTBI person who participates in an exploration of gender,” she laments.
The professor, whose stage name in her drag facet is Lola Von Miramar, shows shy optimism in the face of the wave of anti-LGTBI laws in the country, which she sees as the clear reflection of a social struggle: “The more progress there is, the more resistance there will be.” presents and in recent decades we have made a lot of progress in the recognition and social and legal incorporation of LGTBI people”. However, she believes that the regressions produced by the extreme right in the country border on the grotesque: “Who would have thought that in 2023 it would be necessary to defend the right to drag?”
The political right, hand in hand with the evangelical religion and the most conservative Catholicism, “has seen that this issue generates enthusiasm among its followers and has used it to create a false moral panic against children,” warns La Fountain-Stokes. With these discursive frameworks, “they create a scapegoat and manage to distract the population from the most urgent issues, such as violence by firearms, social violence, racism or the persistence of poverty.”