I had been to the Science Museum in Oklahoma City a number of times both as a teacher chaperoning field trips and on my own. It might be a bit of coastal snobbery, but I found the planetarium a little inadequate. It was like any other planetarium except much smaller, both the projector and the dome itself. Although it was a state thing, the city that housed it was pre-rebirth at the time and, since apparently at the time, few people travelled and few of those that did would go to a planetarium elsewhere, if they saw this one would think it was like all of them.
My snobbery was based on big city planetariums, like Boston, NYC, and L.A., and this one just seemed to give up the wow-factor and settle on the meh one.
I was, therefore, happy to read that the museum will be getting a bigger better planetarium.
As the city and, by extension, the state has energetically moved itself forward, the attention to improving people’s science knowledge was evident in this and quite a change from the time I lived there.
And then, like the Biden docs putting some water on the Trump dumpster fire and letting some air out of the joy balloon, that happy moment was followed by one that pulled the state back to the days it had been leaving behind.
State Representative Kevin West has filed House Bill 2186, to be heard February 6, that would make it “unlawful for a person to engage in an adult cabaret performance” in public before a minor with a fine of $500 to $20,000 and a possible 30 day behind bars.
His explanation for the bill makes it clear it is a targeted bill.
“But if you have a private venue and parents want to take their children there, then that would not be affected by this bill. It wouldn’t be allowed where just the general public would be able to see the performance. So like a library or a school or something like that would fall into being under the jurisdiction of this bill.”
Many parents bring their children with them to Pride Festivals and many festivals include “Family Friendly” spaces and activities.
The one in Oklahoma City brings in lots of tax dollars and may very well still be the biggest parade/festival in the city that took its time realizing that, and the state now includes it in Board of Tourism’s catalog of things to do when visiting the state. The festival takes place in the open, so the area is public and anyone can enter the crowd outside the fenced in ticket-holder space to watch any show.
The same holds true for the Tulsa Festival and those in smaller towns where closet doors are being removed from their hinges.
Would this violate the law, and either be the excuse to deny a festival and or parade permit or control its content by banning the inclusion of Drag Queens in any outside entertainment, or for waiting until they have performed and then, because they broke the law, arresting each Drag Queens after they leave the stage, producing pictures in color that mirror the black and white ones that we have seen of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion?
Along with his bill specifically naming Drag Queen story hours as events that would be considered unlawful, it would also create a misdemeanor for anyone who organizes or authorizes such performances with fines of $500 to $1,000 and a maximum one year in county jail.
One’s right to assemble would be under attack.
Although Drag Queens put on clothes to perform, along with wigs, padding, jewelry, make-up, and all manner of items called for to complete the illusion, and basically have to remain dressed to sustain it, West’s bill compares Drag Performers to strippers and topless dancers where clothes removal is essential and silent body gyrations are for the Representative somehow the same as lip-synching a Diva.
Although not meant to be but could be taken as insulting on certain levels, the comparison is more toward clowns and mimes which involve dressing up not down and do not imply the unacceptable.
In my time in Oklahoma City, I got to know many Drag Queens. These were, for the most part, professional performers who might get raunchy at a show inside a club where minors cannot enter but tone it down when performing in more public spaces. Yes, there are always exceptions or clueless people in any group, just look at Republicans and the clergy of any religion, denomination, or sect, but these do not define the group. They stand out from it.
Like so many such bills written by a person of one group to criminalize members of another, purposely defining that group according the definition’s usefulness to that end and ignoring reality, West’s bill defines a Drag Queen as a “male or female performer who adopts a flamboyant or parodic feminine persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup.”
You know, like that child groomer Minnie Pearl.
So, any female entertainers of Oklahoma, regardless of venue or genre. check your dress and mannerisms so neither being a flamboyant persona and/or glamorously dressed, could get you arrested, fined, and jailed.
West objects to the characterization that his bill is an attempt to ban Drag shows because,
“clearly nothing in the bill says that those are being banned. It’s just making sure that they’re done in the location where it’s intended.”
Wouldn’t that include Drag Queen Story Hour because having a Drag Queen read a book to children like police, firefighters, clowns, and clergy among others do, in a public library is what is intended?
Continuing without giving real examples of harm done or what Drag Queen story hours really are, he attempts a subliminal picture by pointing out,
“I think that it really just comes to some of those boundaries. We have a lot of laws on the books that prohibit certain activities in public spaces and with everything that we’ve been seeing for the last few years on this subject, I think that’s why you’re seeing a lot of bills like this.”
Other than the conservative right’s performative outrage, what has anyone actually seen?
Usually the view is of a room full of children with parents listening to what appears to be a well-dressed and perfectly coiffed woman reading a book to kids who are listening.
I say “usually” because there has been an increase in neo-nazis and the like entering the room and yelling derogatory things at the reader while children are in the room.
West’s bill follows the lead of Arizona, Texas, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, Missouri, Tennessee, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia.
But following is not new to Oklahoma.
In spite of no problems in sports, bathrooms, and other places divided by gender that had been predicted, during the 12 years that Gender Identity was included as protected in the school district’s policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination, when states like the above mentioned were falling over each other to be the first to pass anti-Trans laws based on ignorance, chosen or otherwise, not wanting to be left out, the state legislature ignored the reality of its own capitol city and went with the other states and removed those students from the policies.
But lest you think this is just a local, red state, delusional approach to a non-issue, last October, Republicans in the US House introduced a bill to “Stop the Sexualization of Children,” targeting drag queen story hours as “sexually-oriented events” based, obviously on the trope that Gay (that would include all the letters) and sex are the same because that is how they, not the Gays define it.
The bill would allow (encourage) parents to sue public libraries for “sexually explicit materials or programs.”
Again, as defined by them.
The Gays and Lesbians have shown they are not now nor were ever what they had been portrayed as.
Having lost the traditionally accepted targets of bigotry and their use as a scare tactic, Jews, Irish, Italians, Blacks, etc., losing the Gays too meant a rush to fill that gap, and so, in spite of having been here and having been abundantly visible through such things as RuPaul’s Drag Race, the attempt is being made to demonize what is more familiar to people than the right has chosen to believe, Drag Queens.
In every school, every day, every student in Oklahoma recites the Pledge of Allegiance based on the expressed belief that it has meaning and is not just a rote exercise for looks.
But it will seem just that if the state decides that not everyone gets to share in the “Liberty and Justice for all”.
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