Texas drag queens, protesters at odds in latest battleground over LGBT rights

The bomb threat came in at 9:49 p.m.

Trey Stewart was already exhausted. Earlier that June day, on the first Saturday of Pride Month, the gay bar he owns in Dallas’ Oak Lawn neighborhood hosted an all-ages drag brunch.

Inside Mr. Misster, parents and kids sang along to pop hits. Adults bounced babies on their laps as a drag queen lip-synced to Diana Ross’ “I’m Coming Out.” A kid sporting a rainbow tutu and long braids offered up a dollar to a drag queen in white knee-high boots and a blue wig.

Outside, dozens of protesters taunted the patrons, calling them “disgusting” and urging them to repent. Some clutched flags and signs, others bullhorns. Police stood sentinel at the door.

Stewart anticipated the trouble. His staff had been fielding calls and emails since they announced the event. Hundreds flooded in, he said, laden with death threats and homophobic slurs. First, his staff called the police. Eventually, they unplugged the phone.

“It was a jarring thing to think there are people that sit at home and think of ways to harm other people,” Stewart told The Dallas Morning News, recalling the experience months later. “I have really never been met with such hatred before in my life.”

Drag shows across the country are being targeted at an increasing clip by protesters and politicians who demand that kids be banned from these events. There have been nearly two dozen protests against drag queen events in at least 18 states from New Hampshire to Nevada this year, according to a News analysis of media reports from across the country.

Texas has experienced more anti-drag protests than any other state.

While the numbers of protesters typically remain small, their cause enjoys the backing of some of the state’s most powerful politicians. Last week, Attorney General Ken Paxton called for the shutdown of all-ages drag shows and, where possible, criminal prosecutions, teeing the issue up for debate during the 2023 legislative session. Paxton did respond to requests for comment.

The protests are part of the larger national debate over LGBTQ rights and whether discussions of gender and sexuality belong in our libraries, schools and hospitals, the organizers say.

Young Americans are identifying as LGBTQ now more than ever, census figures show, and drag is part of mainstream pop culture. By its sheer existence, drag challenges traditional gender expression. It does so openly and joyfully — with color, movement and sound. Drag queens and their supporters say this makes them an easy, but unfair, target of modern-day morality police.

Stewart had anticipated the protests at Mr. Misster this summer. But the bomb threat shocked him. Within minutes, a SWAT team arrived and swept the bar. Police found nothing, reporting the incident to the FBI.

The bar still gets threats, he said, but it has continued its drag brunches.

“Our community has proven that we won’t back down because you’re upset about something we’re doing,” Stewart said.

Why now? Why here?

Drag has long been the target of those who see it as a threat to social mores. In the past century, drag clubs in Texas have been raided, protested and even burned to the ground. Demonstrations picked up after the advent in 2015 of Drag Story Hour, which brought drag queens into schools and libraries to read books to children.

But the protest at Mr. Misster was the catalyst anew, elevating “all ages” drag shows as a target for social conservatives.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Arizona gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake have all recently targeted drag, and, ahead of the midterm elections, anti-LGBTQ groups have raised funds on the issue. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida released a campaign ad last month in which he said “the radical left,” if not stopped, would “try to turn boys into girls.” The image he used to represent the group he reviles: a drag queen.

The focus on drag comes as the nation’s identity is changing, said Lauren Gutterman, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin who focuses on gender and sexuality.

Nearly one in four people 18- to 24-years-old identify as LGBTQ, more than twice the rate of the generation before them, according to recent U.S. Census and Gallup poll data. In Texas, more than 8% of adults now identify as LGBTQ, and the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates one in five of the more than 46,000 same-sex couples in Texas are raising children.

As one of the most vibrant — and visible — queer art forms, drag sows fear among people unready for these shifting demographics, Gutterman said.

“It challenges the bigger narrative of queer life and queer youth as depressing, at risk, suffering, sad,” she explained. “It’s joyful — and that’s part of what makes it scary.”

The protests in Texas ramped up in June, national LGBT Pride Month, and have continued into the midterm election season. All of the state’s top GOP elected officials are up for reelection this year. Paxton, a Republican who has run on a campaign to halt the expansion of LGBTQ rights, called for drag show prosecutions the week before early voting started.

Salem Moon, a Fort Worth-based drag queen, sees the protests not as genuine attempts to protect kids but as a part of a broader effort to push LGBTQ people back into the closet.

“This has never been an issue about children,” said Moon, who performed at an August show in Roanoke that was targeted by protesters. “It’s an attack on queers and they’re using children as a hiding mechanism — and I can see right through them.”

Profile of the protesters

The News tallied the number of media reports of anti-drag protests across the country this year and found at least eight that occurred in Texas, with more than half of those in North Texas.

Protesters have shown up at drag events in Dallas, Arlington, Roanoke, Pflugerville, Katy, Houston and Plano. In September, a drag show in Denton was canceled over security concerns. Most of the targeted events were open to children. But at least one “adults only” event also drew protesters because it was Disney-themed.

The online attention to these events has largely been driven by a handful of conservative agitators with huge social media followings. But the protests are planned, and many who attend, appear to be linked to a small number of local groups that espouse anti-gay and transgender views.

Protect Texas Kids, led by recently-graduated University of North Texas student Kelly Neidert, is the most active group behind the protests here. Her efforts go far beyond targeting drag shows. This year, Neidert has also protested against LGBTQ Pride events and a Dallas doctor who provides gender-affirming care.

Neidert has headlined talks in recent weeks alongside Michael Quinn Sullivan, the founder of Empower Texans, a group that targets Republicans it deems insufficiently conservative, and publisher of Texas Scorecard, a website that has written favorably about the protests.

She was reportedly banned from Twitter after she said people at Pride events should be “rounded up.”

Neidert and Sullivan did not respond to requests for an interview.

Members of the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys, and individuals toting swastika flags and displaying antisemitic language, have also been among the protesters.

Many are pulling from an old playbook to attack the performances, accusing drag queens and their supporters of “grooming” or “sexualizing” children.

Kevin Whitt, a former drag queen who helped found the protest group Culture Warriors of America, said his main concern is that drag normalizes being transgender.

“Kids are confused enough and if they are out in front of a man wearing a dress, it confuses them even more,” said Whitt, who was fired from his job with the Texas GOP after he posted videos from outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. “If someone truly believes, truly, truly feels that they were born in the wrong gender, they are mentally ill and they need to seek therapy.”

The American Psychological Association says identifying as transgender does not in and of itself constitute a mental disorder, which refers to a psychological state that causes significant distress or disability. All the major state and national physicians groups support age-appropriate and individualized medical treatments for transgender youths.

Tracy Shannon, whose former spouse came out as transgender, leads Culture Warriors of America with Whitt. In 2019, the Houston Public Library apologized after she exposed that it had hired a registered sex offender for drag queen story time. Shannon said she opposes threatening people with violence but condones “shaming adults” who bring kids to drag shows.

“They are grooming events for kids to groom them into a sexual political orthodoxy that is the LGBTQ sexual ethic,” she said. “We realize none of this would be happening if woke parents didn’t want woke points for taking their kids to these events.”

Drag queens speak out

The News spoke with six Texas drag queens who performed at events targeted by protesters this year. Some did not want to be quoted because of safety concerns, saying they’d received threats. Many said they have never before experienced this kind of sustained vitriol.

All said the protests aren’t the outcome of an honest disagreement between differing minds. They are hateful attacks on LGBTQ culture that use “child safety” as a cover, the drag queens said, led by a small group of people who want everyone to live their lives and raise their kids according to their moral and religious ethic.

“I don’t just understand all the hassle of what they’re trying to put us through,” said Shasta Montana, 23, who performed at the show in Arlington and believes the protests distract from debates over abortion and gun violence. “They’re clearly trying to shift focus to other things.”

Drag has deep roots in the Lone Star State, from the “female impersonators” featured at the State Fair of Texas more than a century ago, to Texas queens like Donna Day, Tasha Kohl and Hot Chocolate who came up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and the divas that draw big crowds today to the Rose Room or Round-Up Saloon.

Drag queens can be gay or straight, cisgender or transgender. Drag queens who identify as men often refer to themselves as “she” while performing and “he” in everyday life. Performers who dress as men are known as drag kings.

From TV shows to TikTok, drag is now as ubiquitous as sequins on a diva’s dress. Like most any form of entertainment, it can be raunchy or PG, playful or political. Comedy, lip-syncing and dancing is common. Many performers are also accomplished acrobats, pulling off splits and cartwheels in 6-inch heels.

But drag need not be inherently sexual, Moon said, and patrons don’t show up expecting a striptease. When kids are invited, she said the shows are adjusted: no profanity or inappropriate routines, more modest costumes. Still, the threats roll in.

Brandi Williams, a transgender woman who has been doing drag for 11 years, said protesters with Nazi flags showed up to a show she performed in Pflugerville last month.

“They were saying the N-word, they were saying the F-word. Any person of color, they were yelling racial slurs,” said Williams, 30. “It’s really sad. … But I’ve been through a lot in my life. I’ve heard everything under the sun before.”

None of the queens The News spoke with said they would quit performing due to the protests. Drag gives them a creative outlet, they said, and also helped many of them through questions they had about their sexuality or gender.

“Getting to participate in something so beautiful, something so expressive, something so rigorous really drew me in,” said Crystal Whitney, 24, a drag queen who was supposed to host the canceled show in Denton. “Drag is for everybody.”

Whitney believes the protesters have the right to free speech — but not to threaten their lives.

“These people are relentless. They’re always going to be saying something,” Whitney said. “But at the same time I think if I am able to share my opinion, they should be able to share their opinion, even if they’re full of hate.”

Future political fights

LGBTQ activists say the drag protests are unsurprising in a state that’s repeatedly legislated against the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and, especially, transgender Texans. In 2017, Republican lawmakers failed to approve a bill about bathrooms use by transgender people. Last year, they passed a law putting restrictions on transgender student athletes.

When legislators meet for their next session in January, they are likely to debate bans on gender-affirming medical care for minors and library books with LGBTQ themes.

Last month, the drag show protesters added a powerful political ally: the Republican Party of Texas. Taking a page from the protesters’ playbook, the party’s Twitter account publicized the date and location of the Pflugerville drag show.

The party encourages Republicans to boycott all-ages drag shows, Texas GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi told The News, and stands “with the vast majority of Texans who oppose the overt sexualization of children.” When asked what evidence he has that most Texans think kids should be banned from drag shows, he responded, “Our ability to observe the obvious.”

Last week, Paxton became the most high-profile statewide official to call for a state law targeting drag shows. He wants lawmakers to “prohibit this kind of grossly sexual conduct” and let him “prosecute when district and county attorneys refuse,” he told a conservative website.

Paxton was reacting to a recent viral video of a child at a drag brunch in Plano. While the event was advertised for a mature audience, the venue owner said he let a group of adults bring in a child. The video prompted Paxton to ask prosecutors to step in, but the local district attorney said he had no authority to do so and Plano police said no laws were broken.

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, a Republican, also supports greater oversight of all-ages drag shows. After being asked to designate Mr. Misster as a sexually oriented business (akin to a strip club or adult movie theater), he said current state law does not appear to allow him to do this but pledged to investigate every drag show reported to his office.

“It is clear that children should not participate in, nor attend these events. We absolutely need additional provisions in Texas law to protect children,” Hegar said in a statement.

Some protesters have also called for churches that host drag events to lose their tax-exempt statuses.

Neither Gov. Greg Abbott nor Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick responded to requests for comment about the protests, although Patrick said he opposes allowing children to attend drag shows. House Speaker Dade Phelan declined to comment.

Ricardo Martinez, CEO of the LGBT advocacy group Equality Texas, said the drag protests are part of the ongoing “well coordinated and cruel attack” on the community. But he pointed out that the majority of anti-LGBT bills Texas lawmakers have introduced in recent years have died.

“We’re in this unfortunate space and time where uncommon courage is required from our community,” Martinez said. “That takes the form of being 100% authentically yourself and continuing living your life.”

A glossary

Drag — The practice of dressing and acting in a manner typically associated with another gender, typically in an exaggerated way as part of a performance or for entertainment value. Drag queens portray women and drag kings portray men. Drag performers can be gay or straight, cisgender or transgender.

Transgender — The term used for someone whose gender identity does not match their sex assignment at birth. Some, but not all, transgender people undertake physical changes to match their external gender expression to the gender with which they identify.

Cisgender — The term used for someone whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth.

Queer — A term that may be used to denote someone is a member of the LGBTQ community. Historically a pejorative term, many LGBTQ people are reclaiming it as a helpful catchall. It means something different for each user, and it may refer to someone’s gender identity, sexual orientation or both.