Britney Banks speaks to protesters exterior the Tennessee state Capitol on Feb. 14, 2023, because the legislature hears testimony on two payments that may limit the rights of LGBTQ individuals within the state.
Blaise Gainey/WPLN
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Blaise Gainey/WPLN
Britney Banks speaks to protesters exterior the Tennessee state Capitol on Feb. 14, 2023, because the legislature hears testimony on two payments that may limit the rights of LGBTQ individuals within the state.
Blaise Gainey/WPLN
Nashville, TENN. — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed a invoice banning drag exhibits in public areas, a measure that can seemingly power drag exhibits underground in Tennessee.
Lee gave his signature simply hours after the measure handed within the Senate Thursday afternoon. In the identical sitting, he signed a ban on gender-affirming well being care for youth within the state.
The announcement comes as a yearbook photograph of the Republican governor in drag lately surfaced on Reddit.
Gov. Bill Lee has signed a invoice banning drag exhibits in public areas, a measure that can seemingly power drag exhibits underground in Tennessee. WPLN’s @MariannaBac reviews Lee signed the measure this afternoon, simply hours after the measure handed within the Senate. https://t.co/0nHvViwpZQ
— WPLN News – Nashville Public Radio (@WPLN) March 2, 2023
Lee says there is a massive distinction between carrying a costume at a highschool soccer sport and drag queens carrying a costume on stage.
Hella Skeleton, a drag performer in rural Middle Tennessee, says the road isn’t clear.
“For Bill Lee to say, ‘You know, that was lighthearted once I did it,’ that’s completely absurd when loads of drag is extraordinarily lighthearted,” Skeleton says. “Apparently when straight males costume up badly in drag, that is OK. But when homosexual and queer and trans individuals do it, that is not OK.”
Republican State Rep. Jack Johnson co-sponsored the invoice. He says, “We’re defending youngsters and households and oldsters who need to have the ability to take their youngsters to public locations. We’re not attacking anybody or concentrating on anybody.”
Broad language worries advocates
The language of the invoice has additionally drawn concern from the bigger LGBTQ group. Drag performers are outlined as “male or feminine impersonators.” The ACLU of Tennessee’s Henry Seaton says that would impression queer Tennesseans throughout the board, not simply drag performers.
“It’s … this refined and sinister option to additional criminalize simply being trans,” Seaton says.
The ban might even have a chilling impact on Pride festivals. Outdoor drag is a staple within the Tennessee summer time warmth. While new legal guidelines usually go into impact on July 1, the invoice was quietly amended in January to take impact April 1 — forward of Pride month in June.
Tennessee Tech scholar Cadence Miller says his technology of queer individuals owe lots to tug queens, and that it is no accident they’re underneath menace now.
“Historically, drag has been such an integral a part of queer tradition,” Miller says. “Trans drag performers who had been like pioneers and us getting … any kind of queer rights, like in any respect.”
Legal challenges forward
The legislation calls drag exhibits “dangerous to minors,” however the state’s American Civil Liberties Union says that the authorized definition for “dangerous to minors” may be very slender in Tennessee and solely covers excessive sexual or violent content material.
“The legislation bans obscene performances, and drag performances will not be inherently obscene,” says ACLU of Tennessee Legal Director Stella Yarbrough. The manner the legislation is written, she says, mustn’t make drag exhibits unlawful within the state.
“However, we’re involved that authorities officers might simply abuse this legislation to censor individuals based mostly on their very own subjective viewpoints of what they deem applicable.”
Yarbrough says the ACLU will problem the legislation whether it is used to punish a drag performer or shut down a family-friendly LGBTQ occasion.
Impacts on native enterprise and past
The measure refers to tug exhibits as “grownup cabaret” that “attraction to a prurient nature.” Nashville enterprise proprietor David Taylor testified earlier than the state legislature that the drag exhibits at his membership will not be sexually specific:
“We know this as a result of we’ve got a Tennessee liquor license and are certain by Tennessee liquor legal guidelines. Our greater than 20 years in enterprise, we have not obtained a quotation for certainly one of our drag performers.”
Taylor says the ban on drag will negatively impression Nashville’s economic system. Drag brunches within the metropolis’s bars are stuffed with bachelorette events, and Music City’s notorious fleet of celebration automobiles features a drag queen-specific bus.
“My companies alone have contributed greater than $13 million to the state within the type of gross sales and liquor taxes since we opened,” Taylor says.
This legislative session is the third yr in a row that the statehouse has peeled again the rights of transgender Tennesseans. It has many trans individuals and households of trans youngsters questioning whether or not staying within the state is well worth the battle.
“There’s lots of people who grew up right here, and that is the place their roots are. And it is actually brutal to be confronted with that type of selection of, you already know, you’ll be able to both keep right here and undergo or you’ll be able to go away this dwelling that you’ve got created and all that you’ve got invested in right here,” says drag performer Hella Skeleton. “So, yeah, it is a actually powerful selection.”