Arizona Republicans take aim at drag queens? Oh please – The Arizona Republic
The Arizona Legislature returns to the state Capitol, ready, willing and absolutely champing at the bit to confront the most pressing issues that plague our fair state.
Noooo, not the need for affordable housing or the state’s dwindling supply of water or the opioids epidemic that is killing five Arizonans every day.
Certainly, not the crying need to improve Arizona’s public schools – the ones attended by the vast majority of our children.
Instead, Republican legislators are going after the newest boogeyman on the block: drag queens.
Seriously.
Senate swings into action with drag show bills
It’s the latest front in the far right’s culture wars, one opened last year after a gay bar in Texas hosted what was billed as a family-friendly drag queen show.
Republican legislators in Arizona immediately swung into action, vowing to “fight like hell to protect the most innocent from these horrifying and disturbing trends”.
Bills promised:Arizona Republicans want to ban kids from drag shows
And so comes this year’s bills to bar drag shows in places where children might see them and even to limit when such shows can occur even when kids aren’t around.
Senate Bill 1026 would prevent the state from funding drag shows for kids. Never mind that even the bill’s sponsor, Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, acknowledges that he knows of no instance in which the state has funded drag shows for kids.
SB 1028 would bar “adult cabaret” performances in public or “in any location that could be viewed by a minor”.
SB 1030 would limit when and where drag shows can occur.
No performances near schools, homes
And by drag show, the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, means a performance in which men dress up as women (or vice versa) “and engage in singing, dancing or a monologue or skit in order to entertain an audience of two or more people.”
Specifically, a man couldn’t dress up as Marilyn Monroe and sing within a quarter mile of a daycare center, a school, a playground, a park, a house or a church.
Drag queens also would be barred from performing between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. Monday through Saturday and between 1 a.m. and noon on Sunday.
It’s a pity Kern didn’t return a call to explain the need for his bills. I would have liked to ask him where we can view this parade of drag queens, sashaying through the streets in order supposedly corrupt our children.
Richard Stevens would like to know as well.
Stevens is one of the Valley’s best-known drag queens, performing for the last 25 years as Barbra Seville at theaters, bars and even at baby showers attended by a certain future gubernatorial candidate (and her daughter).
It’s a solution to a non-existent problem
Stevens is puzzled – and disheartened – by the bill.
“It’s a solution to a problem that just doesn’t exist,” he told me. “It’s an answer to a question that no one asks. It’s ill intended. There’s nothing behind this except somebody trying to build his name.”
Stevens points out that drag has long been embedded in our culture, from the time of Shakespeare to the time of Looney Tunes (see: Bugs Bunny).
The far bigger obscenity here is a sitting legislator who dresses up not in sequins but in an empty suit, ignoring the real problems facing our children.
A legislator who, as one of his first acts upon returning to office after having been ousted by voters in 2020, is to offer a piece of fiction calculated to rouse the right and improve his political prospects.
Bills aimed at improving public education? Nope.
Bills designed to protect children from gun violence or homelessness? Uh-uh.
Bills aimed at ensuring that future generations of kids aren’t asking for the moon when they ask for a simple drink of water? Nah.
But oh, those drag queens.
Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.
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