Here’s why…
Way back in 1971 at start of my drag career at the Watch Your Hat and Coat Saloon in Nashville, we had to enter and leave the club on Second Avenue with our drag concealed in a garbage bag. We were equally careful to enter the club as men in our street clothes and to scrub our faces free of makeup before leaving each night.
Otherwise, you could encounter a redneck looking for an excuse to beat up a faggot in a dress.
Now, over 50 years later, reading the news coverage of the drag ban that goes into effect April 1 in my home state of Tennessee, I feel sick to my stomach. The hate-filled redneck bullies are no longer lurking in the alley waiting to beat us up after work. In 2023, they’ve been elected to the Tennessee state legislature. They work at the state capitol. They reside in the governor’s mansion.
And I’m here to tell you as someone who performed in drag on stage 50 years ago in Nashville at the Watch Your Hat and Coat and later, at The Cabaret in Printer’s Alley and The Carousel in Knoxville, Tennessee’s new law is far more dangerous than anything we ever faced back in the 1970s. I say that as a drag queen who was on stage in 1973 when someone intentionally set fire to the Watch Your Hat and Coat and burned that packed club to the ground.
Under this new Tennessee law, drag performers could face six months in jail on a misdemeanor charge for a first offense. The second time, it’s a felony punishable by up to six years in prison. So, if you ride on a float in a pride parade or read a storybook to children in a public library, you’re risking arrest and jail — for entertaining people. (Editor’s note: On March 31, hours before the new law was set to begin, a federal judge temporarily halted the ban, citing concerns about the constitutionality of the new law).
In contrast, aside from requiring all performers to get an entertainer’s license from the City of Nashville and making us put a Mr. in front of our stage…
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