Meet Rep. Jared Patterson, the latest Texas embarrassment who … – Queerty
Get ready, Texas: there’s yet another simple sheriff in town. You may have trouble remembering his incredibly generic cis straight white guy name, but we fear we may be hearing it said in mild annoyance for a couple years to come.
State Representative Jared Patterson won his most recent race by running entirely unopposed in the newly redistricted Texas landscape and it shows. His website boasts his being selected as one of the “top ten most conservative” members in the Texas House by the Texas Tribune. Specifically speaking, he’s number ten — the least notable of the group.
Like any conservative politician desperate for legitimacy *coughGeorgeSantoscough*, his Texas House bio has his beginnings tenuously tied to the events of September 11, saying he vaguely “found purpose” during that tragic time.
His site lists his main issues as things like “property tax relief”, “human trafficking”, and “the sanctity of life”. Yet, the same site’s News tab shows his actual agenda of attacking the LGBTQ+ community.
In particular, the rep has pushed to ban books with LGBTQ+ themes for being “sexually explicit” and continues to attempt outlawing discussion of sexuality and gender from the classroom altogether. In a state plagued by school shootings, a faulty power grid, and Ted Cruz, republican lawmakers continue to focus almost single-mindedly on making a scapegoat of the queer community.
Related: Texan mess Greg Abbott is getting lit up online for his latest bout of hypocrisy
The backwoods buffoon’s latest irritating side project is HB 643, which targets drag shows as being “explicit”. A new bill he’s introduced would make any business that ever hosts any drag performers classify itself as a “sexually oriented business”.
Eye-roll incoming:
If you want to host an explicit drag show that’s your business. If you want children to be able to attend that’s our business.
Any business hosting an explicit drag show should have to become a sexually oriented business. https://t.co/XQXvat8H5Q
— Rep. Jared Patterson (@JaredLPatterson) January 17, 2023
“If you want to be a sexually oriented business, that’s fine, but you need to play by the same rules as everyone else does,” Rep. Patterson tells KVUE.
“We’re trying to tailor a bill to say that the sexually suggestive drag shows where grown men wear women’s underwear and seek children to stuff dollar bills into their underwear,” he says, “we don’t want that to occur in the state of Texas.”
Related: Ted Cruz just got booed in Texas for his latest mind-numbing idea
Anyone familiar with drag performers or drag shows knows that sexually explicit matter is reserved for bars and clubs that are already limited to legal adults, but that’s of no importance to conservative mouthpieces who want to win easy points with their oblivious “think of the children!” bases.
Under this bill (or other similar Texas bills, like HB 708 from State Rep. Matt Shaheen and HB 1266 from Nate Schatzline), any business could not legally host any event with a drag performance unless they gained a legal classification akin to that of a strip club. This would massively impact those businesses’ taxes and zoning requirements. For instance, businesses deemed “sexually-oriented” can’t operate within 1,000 feet of places like libraries, museums, schools and day cares in Austin.
The working Government definition of “drag performance” reads, “a performance in which a performer exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth … and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience for entertainment”.
The rep says he doesn’t “want a big, heavy-handed government coming down” while introducing sweeping queerphobic legislation that would outlaw things as tame as a trans person working in an orchestra or a theater screening a Madea movie. God forbid a production of Tootsie or Some Like It Hot come through Texas!
While there’s every chance his bill will die a quiet, embarrassing death, this faux-moralist lawmaker has planted himself firmly on our nerves.