Jefferson City has once again immersed itself in faux controversy. This time, some Republican legislators are sounding the alarm about drag shows that are supposedly corrupting Missouri’s youth. The topic is so silly that even top legislative Republicans are trying to shrug it off, but that didn’t prevent last week’s spectacle of a committee-hearing showdown between lawmakers and drag queens in full costume.
The image would have been amusing if not for the fact that Missouri has serious, unaddressed problems that these lawmakers continue to ignore while engaging in this obvious attempt to inflame the Republican base over yet another non-issue.
Drag shows — performances in which men dress and act like over-the-top gaudy women — are typically comedic rather than sexual. But radicalized Republican politicians here and around the nation have seized on them alongside other non-issues like racial- and gender-related curriculum in schools.
As the Post-Dispatch’s Jack Suntrup reports, the Missouri legislation would prohibit “adult cabaret performances” that appeal “to a prurient interest” from being performed in public or anywhere they “could be” viewed by a minor. Though the measure has little chance of passage (“I think we have more important things to talk about,” said Republican Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden), the First Amendment issues it raises are worth considering.
The way the bill is written, it could potentially lead to the banning of any public display of hit films such as “Tootsie,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Some Like it Hot,” on the argument that those plainly comedic movies somehow cater to prurient interests because they show characters in drag. The bill also puts Missouri Republicans at odds with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his tolerance of past drag displays by Rep. George Santos, the New York serial fabulist whose vote McCarthy depends on to hold his fragile caucus together.
The Missouri legislation should be viewed in the context of the conservative campaign to spotlight rare or silly topics to stoke anger and mobilize voters on the right. It also serves as a useful distraction from the fact that the GOP remains the party defending the interests of the wealthy to the detriment of some of the very red-state citizens it whips up with these culture-war issues. How else does the party keep such a tight grip on working-class voters who would be hit hardest by the erosion of Social Security, the proposed replacement of the federal income tax with a massive national sales tax and other conservative projects?
These kinds of social-issue legislative crusades, like drag shows themselves, are performative and flashy but don’t ultimately address real problems. Missouri’s teachers are grossly underpaid, its health care system is inadequate, its infrastructure is a national embarrassment. And too many of its legislators are prancing around on the political stage pretending to be something they’re not: responsible representatives of the people.
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