The South Carolina GOP's war against anything and everything LGBTQ+ related is now taking aim at drag shows. The deeply misleadingly named "Defense of Children's Innocence Act" has just been introduced in the SC House Judiciary Committee and will ban children from attending drag shows "considered explicit."
The bill accuses drag shows of being "intended to provide sexual stimulation or sexual gratification," which anyone familiar with drag shows will tell you couldn't be further from the truth. It's very telling that the bill's sponsor, Thomas Beach, has never seen a drag show.
Demand South Carolina's GOP leave LGBTQ+ people alone!
Republicans have long used a performative and deeply cynical bad-faith concern for "children" to make their explicit bigotry more palatable and give it the veneer of respectability, but this is very evidently an attempt to remove LGBTQ+ self-expression from public life.
Drag is one of the world's oldest and most universal forms of comedy and has been a staple of queer culture for hundreds of years. The fact that they're going after drag shows and not Hooters makes it clear this has nothing to do with children and everything to do with forcing queer people back in the closet.
Demand South Carolina reject the bill to ban kids from drag shows!
