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Tennessee’s ‘drag law’ and history explained [1]
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Date: 2023-03
Bella DuBalle never dreamed of becoming an activist or playing a starring role in the battle against prohibiting drag shows in Tennessee, the southern state that became the first in America to pass such restrictions this month.
“I just wanted to play dress up,” DuBalle, an ordained minister and also the director and host at Atomic Rose, the largest drag club in Memphis, told openDemocracy. “But I’ve always believed that you need to be the person that you needed when you were little. And I didn’t have that.”
DuBalle — who, out of drag, is Slade Kyle and uses they/them pronouns — took on this unfamiliar part last month, as the backlash against the LGTBIQ+ community and their freedoms escalated to where Tennessee will become the first state in the U.S. to clamp down on their art. Starting 1 April, “male or female impersonators”, as well as topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers and strippers, who “provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest" will be banned from “adult cabaret” performances in public where children could see them.
On the day the state governor signed the so-called ‘anti-drag bill’, he also signed legislation banning gender-affirming healthcare for trans teens, joining a growing list of conservative Republican-led states to ban such procedures. This is not the first time Tennessee has banned drag, and a similar bill from the 1970s has many in the LGBTIQ+ community fearful of the repercussions, particularly for trans people.
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The bans come despite widespread protest, by Tennesseans like DuBalle and others. On 20 March, Hayley Williams, Hozier, Sheryl Crow and other American singers held a ‘Love Rising’ benefit concert hosted by RuPaul’s Drag Race alumna Asia O’Hara in the state capital of Nashville in support of the LGBTIQ+ community in Tennessee. The concert raised money for four Tennessee organisations working to fight the state’s ongoing legislative attacks against trans people and drag queens, Rolling Stone Magazine reported.
Tennessee’s drag law explained
DuBalle says there has been a lot of confusion, fear, and misinformation spread about the law in Tennessee. The law will mean that if prosecuted, drag performers will be charged with a misdemeanour on their first offence and could be fined up to $2,500 (roughly £2,048) and face up to 12 months in jail. Subsequent violations could be felonies, punishable by up to six years in prison and fines totalling $3,000 (roughly £2,458).
But DuBalle says the legislation’s wording is “ambiguous” because it doesn’t explicitly name ‘drag’. Stella Yarbrough, the director of Tennessee’s division of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement that “the law bans obscene performances, and drag performances are not inherently obscene” nor “prurient”. The ACLU has vowed to “challenge enforcement of this law if it is used to punish a drag performer or shut down a family-friendly LGBTQ event”.
DuBalle has repeatedly said she won’t comply with the law when it comes into effect and insists her shows are not sexual in any way. She has described her drag as part Miss Piggy of the Muppets, part Tennessee-native country star Dolly Parton, and part Mister Rogers, the late host of a popular American educational children’s TV show.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/tennessee-drag-law-lgbtiq-transgender-history-america-republican/
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