Anyone who has ever seen a drag show knows that they are performances. I remember seeing “Dame Edna” on Broadway, and she was hilarious. There was nothing sexual about her show. And by the way, Dame Edna was played by a straight man who created an original character. Last year, I went to play “Drag Bingo” at a local restaurant, and the performers were funny. Their goal was to entertain.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, America’s number one prude, decided that drag shows had to be banned because they “sexualized” children. In addition to drag shows performed in bistros, there are also Drag Queen Story Hours at local libraries, where drag queens read children’s books out loud. Parents bring their children to these events; the little ones do not come alone.
To heck with parental rights, DeSantis wanted to close down all the drag shows.
Hamburger Mary’s, one of the leading venues for drag queens, sued.
They won.
Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sebtinel tells the story:
In recent years, Florida Republicans have been on a crusade to censor books, speech, theatrical performances and even thoughts expressed in private workplaces.
Their actions have been repeatedly ruled unconstitutional — often by conservative judges who have more respect for the Constitution than these petty politicians with their phony patriotism.
Still, it takes courage to stand up to political bullies willing to spend unlimited amounts of tax dollars, paying lawyers as much as $725 an hour, even when they know they’ll lose.
That’s why John Paonessa and Mike Rogier deserve credit.
The Clermont couple and Hamburger Mary’s franchise owners are the victors in the latest court fight against Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP lawmakers’ attempts to silence speech they dislike.
This time it was Florida’s war on drag queens, which was pretty clearly unconstitutional from the day it debuted, mainly because it was so poorly written.
Authors of the so-called “Protection of Children” act claimed to want to protect kids from “shameful” and “lewd” performances, but couldn’t even explain what that meant.
When bill sponsor Randy Fine was asked on the House floor to define “shameful” — so that venue owners could know what kind of performances would be illegal — he responded:
“Um … um … [eight seconds of silence] … I think that it … again, that is things that are … I dunno … I mean, again, you can look these things up in the dictionary.”
Quite the legislative brain trust.
The reality is that Florida already has laws on the books that protect children from sexually explicit performances. Did you know that? A lot of these tinpot politicians sure hoped you didn’t. But two rounds of federal judges did. And they concluded that this law wasn’t written to target obscenity in general, but rather drag in particular. That’s selective censorship. And if you’re a fan of government doing it, you might prefer living in Russia.
Patriotic Americans don’t support government censorship of speech. Dictators in North Korea do.
So after Paonessa and Rogier saw lawmakers repeatedly target drag performers — and even nonprofit organizations like the Orlando Philharmonic rented out their venues for such shows — Paonessa said the two men decided: “If we just let them do this, what is next?”
Both a federal judge in Orlando and appellate judges in Atlanta ruled they were right to do so.
The 81-page appellate ruling from the majority made several key points: One was that the state already has laws to protect minors and that out-of-court comments from guys like Fine and DeSantis made it clear that the politicians were trying to specifically — and unconstitutionally — target drag.
Another was that the state’s own inability to define the kind of behavior it was trying to outlaw proved it was overly broad. “The Constitution demands specificity when the state restricts speech” to shield citizens “from the whims of government censors,” the ruling stated.
The case also laid bare a lie: These chest-thumping politicians don’t actually believe in “parental rights” or “freedom.” Because this law attempted to make it illegal for teens to attend certain performances even when accompanied by their parents.
Keep in mind: These politicians are fine with parents taking their kids to see R-rated movies with hard-core sex and graphic violence. They kept that legal. It was only when drag queens got on stage that these politicians lost their minds.
Drag queens? Evil. Cinematic depictions of bestiality? That’s OK. Those are some strange family values.
I can’t recall ever taking my own kids to a drag performance. But that was my choice — not the government’s. And Paonessa said many of his restaurant’s offerings, including the Sunday drag brunch, were family-friendly affairs that some teens enjoyed so much, they would return with their own kids when they were older.
Of course some drag performances are vulgar — just like some movies are. But trying to use a snippet of one sexed-up drag show to represent all drag performances is about as honest and accurate as using a movie like “Eyes Wide Shut” or the “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” to represent all movies. It’s a tactic of misrepresentation known as “tyranny of the anecdote” that’s particularly effective with the intellectually incurious
For the record, a dissent was authored by a 95-year-old judge appointed by Gerald Ford who invoked states’-rights-themed arguments and said censorship laws needn’t be that specific.
While the judges who shot down the drag law last week were appointed by Democratic presidents, the judges who shot down DeSantis’ other unconstitutional attempts to silence speech have been hard-core, Federalist Society conservatives.
Like the ones who blocked the “Stop Woke Act” that tried to ban private businesses from holding employee-training sessions on topics like sexism and racism that GOP lawmakers found too “woke.”
And the Trump-appointed judge who invalidated the GOP law that called for arresting citizens who donated more than $3,000 to citizen-led campaigns for constitutional amendments.
If you think government should be able to imprison citizens for donating to campaigns that politicians dislike or silence private speech within the walls of private companies, don’t you dare call yourself a constitutionalist. Or even a patriot.
In response to the latest judicial smackdown, a DeSantis spokesman whined about judicial “overreach” and said: “No one has a constitutional right to perform sexual routines in front of little kids.”
Once again, he was banking on your ignorance, hoping you don’t know Florida already has laws that protect minors — just not ones created specifically to target drag.
The appellate judges referred the case back to Orlando Judge Gregory Presnell, who issued the original injunction in a ruling that was maybe even more damning in effectively detailing the law’s many flaws. But there’s certainly a chance the state will continue trying to litigate the case, since it has unlimited access to your money.
Frankly, Paonessa and Rogier, who shut down their Hamburger Mary’s location in downtown Orlando last year in the middle of this court battle and are currently looking for a new home, probably couldn’t have afforded to fight back in this two-year court battle if they hadn’t had pro bono help. It came from a Tennessee attorney, Melissa J. Stewart, who fought a similarly unconstitutional attack on drag in that state.
But Paonessa said they decided to fight for their rights — and yours — because they concluded: “If not us, then who?”
smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com