'We're going to see more violence' - LGBTQ radio host on Tennesse trans ban

Record ID: 1713670

  • Title: 'We're going to see more violence' - LGBTQ radio host on Tennesse trans ban
  • Date: 4th March 2023
  • Summary: FRISCO, TEXAS, UNITED STATES (FILE - OCTOBER 8, 2022) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF ANTI-LGBT PROTESTERS DEMONSTRATING AT PRIDE EVENT +++CONTAINS PROFANITY+++ PROTESTER DAN CHANDLER WITH PRO-LIFE SIGNS AND A CONFEDERATE FLAG
  • Embargoed: 18th March 2023 01:20
  • Keywords: Bill Lee Michelangelo Signorile Tennessee Transgender trans
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: US
  • Topics: Fundamental Rights/Civil Liberties,North America,Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA003470903032023RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Tennessee Governor Bill Lee said he would sign into law bills that passed the legislature last week banning gender-affirming treatment for transgender youth and restricting drag performances in public.
    Lee said the drag bill, which comes into effect April 1, would protect children from being "potentially exposed to sexualized entertainment, to obscenity."
    And according to one veteran LGTBQ activist and author, the move is both political and reactive.
    "They are focused in on an attack on drag queens, and banning or regulating drag performances as another way to pander to a base in the Republican Party that is very extreme and is pushing a very hateful agenda against LGBTQ people," Michelangelo Signorile, a New York-base Sirius XM host told Reuters in an interview.
    Signorile's activism stretches back to the AIDS epidemic. He is also the author of, "It's Not Over."
    "Transgender people have come into the forefront more. They are asserting their rights. Many states, many cities across the country have embraced rights for transgender people. And as with everything else, with conservatives and unfortunately, the Republican Party, they prey upon people's lack of information, lack of knowledge and people, you know, not really understanding things deeply," he added.
    Speaking to reporters outside a school on Monday, Lee, a Republican, also addressed a high-school yearbook photograph that appeared to show him wearing a cheerleaders' dress, a wig and a pearl necklace.
    "What a ridiculous, ridiculous question," Lee said when asked if he recalled dressing in drag in 1977.
    "The fact that the governor himself has now been revealed to have been in drag in high school says it all, and especially his answer and the way he tried to couch what he did as something that was just, you know, fun and light, and nobody should conflate it with any sort of you know, attack on children, I think really exposed how ridiculous this is," Signorile commented.
    Civil rights groups and drag performers have noted that Tennessee, like other states, already bans obscenity in front of minors, and call the restrictions unconstitutional, vague and redundant.
    Modern drag performances, which have long flourished in LGBT venues before becoming a more mainstream entertainment in recent years, typically do not involve nudity.
    Performers who host drag brunches at restaurants or library reading hours with children say they are able to tailor their shows to be child- or family-friendly. Representative Chris Todd, a Republican sponsor of the bill, has said even drag shows that bill themselves as family-friendly are inappropriate or even harmful to children.
    One of the bills Lee will sign bans doctors from providing gender-affirming medical treatment, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery, for transgender minors.
    The Tennessee bills are part of an upswing in recent months in Republican efforts to regulate the conduct of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.
    And according to Signorile, the Tennessee measure is "instilling fear and a real threat to people of literally walking on the street or being worried about being seen in public as a performer, being worried about their livelihood, because for many people, this is their livelihood, that's how they make their money. It's instilling that fear and that threat, and that's what it's really meant to do, to make people constantly feel that they are not like everyone else and demonizing them."
    (Production: Dan Fastenberg)
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