Florida’s DeSantis Threatens Legal Retaliation Against Drag Show

A drag queen dressed as “Screwdolph the Red-Titted Reindeer” is certainly raunchy. Florida’s Governor is now saying it’s explicit sexual content, and therefore banned.

by Evan Urquhart

The GOP targeting of drag shows continued this week, as a Florida show on Wednesday featuring performers from Ru Paul’s Drag Race became the focus of protests and now faces legal scrutiny, representing a new escalation from the intensely anti-LGBTQ+ DeSantis administration. “A Drag Queen Christmas” is an annual event in Fort Lauderdale that is only now being protested by conservatives, in its 8th yr.

The show in question featured mature themes and raunchy content, but no nudity or sexual acts. Like many adult drag shows it was sexual but not sexy, intended to entertain and scandalize but not titilate (drag perfromance intended for younger audiences generally feature the some of the elaborate costumes of drag, but no sexual content at all). In this case the venue allowed minors if they were accompanied by an adult, however there may not have been anyone under 18 present, according to local news reports.

After conservatives began expressing outrage that minors were allowed to attend the DeSantis administration opened an investigation, suggesting that the show may have broken laws against exposing children to sexually explicit activity. If this is supported the venue could lose their license to sell alcohol.

The most worrying trend here is an attempt by conservatives to redefine sexually explicit content to include a whole bunch of stuff that would not normally be considered that at all. The idea seems to be to interpret the law so that drag shows can be targeted with laws intended to restrict showing pornography to minors. A spokesperson for the Florida Governor described the show with this language in a statement to a conservative blog:

Showing pornography to minors is understandably restricted because criminals who seek to engage in sex with minors often use pornography as part of the process of targeting their victims. However, drag shows are almost never pornographic, and this one was no exception. A conservative outlet, in an article billing itself as a fact check, described the sexually explicit content of the show thus:

“Screwdolph the red-nippled reindeer” is barely even R-rated content, much less pornography. It’s raunchy, to be sure sure. It’s mature themed, which is just as the show advertised. But to suggest that it’s illegal for a parent to bring a 16 or 17 year old to a show containing screwdolph would redefine the boundaries of what teens are generally expected to encounter in the course of a normal American adolescence. Most young people are not 18 before they see their first R rated movie, and many such movies include brief nudity, sex scenes, explicit discussions of sex, and profanity well beyond the use of the word “screw.” While minors aren’t allowed to buy a ticket to see such a movie unsupervised, we allow parents to decide whether a movie with mature themes is appropriate for their children all the time.

Conservatives like DeSantis are ready to drastically redefine what is considered sexually explicit, and it seems unlikely they’ll stop at drag shows. The underlying conservative Christian worldview sees LGBTQ+ people ourselves as inherently sexual explicit, creating a double standard where talking about a marriage between a cis man and a cis woman is non-sexual, but saying the same things about a marriage between two men or two women is sexually explicity. Likewise, cis women talking about shopping for women’s clothing is non-sexual, but trans women talking about shopping for women’s clothing becomes sexual, and therefore in danger of being banned. This is the premise of the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which is redefining LGBTQ+ people’s very existence as being too sexually explicit for children in Florida schools.

It’s dangerous stuff, and it’s hard to say when it will end. If conservatives succeed in making it illegal to hold all ages drag shows, despite performers being fully clothed, then it’s easy to imagine that merely wearing clothing of the “wrong” sex in public may be next. While America has strong 1st Amendment protections at the moment, nothing is certain under a far right Supreme Court which has shown a wanton disregard for precedent if the precedent isn’t to conservatives’ liking. A DeSantis presidency could seek to bring back the days of the Hays code and laws against crossdressing in public, and there’s no guarantee the high court would bat an eye.