In recent years, a wave of Republican lawmakers across the United States has introduced hundreds of laws regulating the conduct of gay and transgender people, ranging from what can be taught in classrooms to bathroom use and medical care. One of the latest states to enact such laws is Tennessee, where a bill restricting drag performances in front of minors will come into effect on April 1st. This law has become one of the faces of a sweeping effort to regulate the LGBTQ+ community’s conduct. The bill will ban “adult cabaret performances,” including some drag acts, in public or in front of minors, with prison sentences for violations.
This law is a result of conservative activist Landon Starbuck, who found a four-minute video of drag performer Joshua Lancaster, wearing a black cowl, white face paint, black lipstick, and white contact lenses performing at Tennessee Tech University’s Backdoor Playhouse. Starbuck claimed that the performance was inappropriate for children and mocked her Christian faith. Starbuck edited the video and posted it on Twitter, where it gained a lot of attention. The university president canceled the next monthly drag show at the school, and Lancaster received threatening messages.
The impacts of the law are already being felt, with several planned drag events being canceled over the winter after protests, and many venues feeling forced to make previously family-friendly drag shows into adults-only events. Drag performers and venue owners say they are worried about their livelihoods and their rights of free expression. Some transgender Tennesseans fear being arrested under the law’s vague language, which lumps together “male or female impersonators,” a term not defined in the law, in the same X-rated category as strippers and exotic dancers.
The Starbucks, who founded Freedom Forever, a non-profit organization that campaigns against the sexual abuse of children and gender-affirming medical treatment for minors, released a legislative agenda they called the Child Protection & Restoration Act, which called for the banning of drag shows and gender-affirming medical care for minors. They are speaking to Republicans in half a dozen other states about passing similar laws and are seeking videos of children at drag shows to support their argument.
The debate in Tennessee has been over whether drag is inherently a sexually explicit art form. The Starbucks say there is no such thing as family-friendly drag, while drag performers cite Bugs Bunny, Shakespeare’s cross-dressing comedies, and the Robin Williams film “Mrs. Doubtfire” among counterexamples. Most Tennessee drag performers work in clubs and bars that admit only those over 18, and Tennessee drag shows tend to be relatively chaste.
Despite the conservative backlash, LGBTQ+ rights activists are fighting back. They argue that these laws are unconstitutional and discriminatory and are threatening to sue the state. Wendy Williams, a drag performer who owns Temptation, the only gay bar in the 150 miles between Knoxville and Nashville, has put the bar up for sale, which she expects will likely become a church. Tennessee’s drag performers and the broader LGBTQ+ community are fighting to protect their rights to free expression and equality under the law.