Britney Banks speaks to protesters outdoors the Tennessee state Capitol on Feb. 14, 2023, because the legislature hears testimony on two payments that might limit the rights of LGBTQ individuals within the state.

Blaise Gainey/WPLN

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Blaise Gainey/WPLN

Britney Banks speaks to protesters outdoors the Tennessee state Capitol on Feb. 14, 2023, because the legislature hears testimony on two payments that might limit the rights of LGBTQ individuals within the state.

Blaise Gainey/WPLN

Nashville, TENN. — Tennessee Gov. Invoice Lee has signed a invoice banning drag exhibits in public areas, a measure that may possible 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 just lately surfaced on Reddit.

Lee says there is a massive distinction between carrying a gown at a highschool soccer sport and drag queens carrying a gown on stage.

Hella Skeleton, a drag performer in rural Center Tennessee, says the road isn’t clear.

“For Invoice Lee to say, ‘You understand, that was lighthearted after I did it,’ that’s completely absurd when lots of drag is extraordinarily lighthearted,” Skeleton says. “Apparently when straight males gown up badly in drag, that is OK. However 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 fogeys who need to have the ability to take their youngsters to public locations. We’re not attacking anybody or focusing 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 might affect queer Tennesseans throughout the board, not simply drag performers.

“It is … this refined and sinister strategy to additional criminalize simply being trans,” Seaton says.

The ban might even have a chilling impact on Pleasure festivals. Outside drag is a staple within the Tennessee summer time warmth. Whereas new legal guidelines usually go into impact on July 1, the invoice was quietly amended in January to take impact April 1 — forward of Pleasure month in June.

Tennessee Tech scholar Cadence Miller says his era of queer individuals owe quite a bit to tug queens, and that it is no accident they’re below risk now.

“Traditionally, drag has been such an integral a part of queer tradition,” Miller says. “Trans drag performers who have been like pioneers and us getting … any kind of queer rights, like in any respect.”

Authorized 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” could be very slim in Tennessee and solely covers excessive sexual or violent content material.

“The legislation bans obscene performances, and drag performances usually are not inherently obscene,” says ACLU of Tennessee Authorized Director Stella Yarbrough. The way in which the legislation is written, she says, shouldn’t make drag exhibits unlawful within the state.

“Nonetheless, we’re involved that authorities officers might simply abuse this legislation to censor individuals primarily based 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 usually are not sexually specific:

“We all know this as a result of we now have a Tennessee liquor license and are sure by Tennessee liquor legal guidelines. Our greater than 20 years in enterprise, we have not obtained a quotation for one in every of our drag performers.”

Taylor says the ban on drag will negatively affect Nashville’s financial system. Drag brunches within the metropolis’s bars are crammed with bachelorette events, and Music Metropolis’s notorious fleet of celebration autos 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 12 months 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 definitely worth the combat.

“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 alternative of, , you may both keep right here and endure or you may depart 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 robust alternative.”