Welcome!
Welcome.
I had no idea.
This is so, this is so lovely.
I didn't know the audience was going to go so crazy.
[cheering]
I didn't know what would happen after Lindsay Graham.
Uh, uh, before we get into these anti-drag bills that are
popping up around the country, I think there are a lot
of people objecting to drag without even
having any idea what it is.
And I know I've never, I've never gone to a drag show.
And can you explain drag?
Absolutely.
Yeah, well, somebody just was shocked that you've
never been to a drag show.
[cheering]
Have you, but it's not.
I'm embarrassed.
No, no, no, it's not shocking that you've
never been to a show that you would think of as a drag show.
But you've probably seen Mrs. Doubtfire
or Tootsie or any of those, things that we have--
I didn't realize they were in drag.
Well.
That's some very convincing costuming.
You know, so drag is something that's
been part of the culture for a very long time
in a lot of different ways.
And so there's many types of it that we've
sort of been accepting in contemporary culture,
like those examples.
But it's something that hearkens back to we see it
in Shakespeare, we see it in kabuki theater,
across cultures.
It's something that has just been innate and unquestioned
for a long time.
But within American history.
I mean, drag is something that has uplifted
and protected and fought for the queer
community pre Stonewall.
[cheering]
[applause]
I mean, pre Stonewall era, queer people had to congregate
in clubs and bars.
That was the one place that they could sort of
find community and find togetherness and feel safe,
even though there were constantly
police raids on those places.
And drag queens, trans women, were the entertainers,
were the matriarchs, were the people
who fostered this community.
And when Stonewall, which was the alleged beginning
of the gay rights movement, when it rolled around,
they were the folks who really started the riot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[applause]
On Drag Race, you sing, you work the runway.
[cheering]
You create and perform your own variety show.
It's just all the things that I do, except the runway
and the singing.
Well, you're in good company with drag queens
not being especially good singers, so that's fine.
And you and I can work on your runway, so.
Thank you, thank you.
And you direct and you write and produce a 70-minute show,
drag shows, right?
Different ones, right?
Yeah.
What are those shows about?
Yeah, so I do a lot of different stuff
that's more in the theatrical realm.
So some of them are evening length plays, as you
would more traditionally know.
Some of them are cabarets with through lines.
And that's another thing about drag
is, that it's so many things.
A lot of people think of it as what we know it
as from reality TV right now, which is largely
lip syncing and big dance movements,
which is really exciting.
But there's also a full history of theater
and a lot of other disciplines.
So my shows are shows that are essentially a love letter
to the queer community, to folks
who need to feel a sense of hope and sense of generosity.
[applause]
Specifically, I do a holiday show with my good friend
Jinkx Monsoon.
Right.
And we've been touring that for this
will be our sixth year.
I'm not announcing it, but it's our sixth year coming up.
And that show is very much rooted in the idea that--
That's a Christmas show.
It's a Christmas show, yes.
So we do it every November and December.
And that came about because of just really seeing the need
among queer young people and queer adults
to feel a sense of family and homecoming at a time of year
where it can have a lot of messaging that we
don't feel included in.
There's many people who have strained relationships
with their families.
And so this show is a message of,
and you know, and it's bawdy and it's funny
and there's big sparkly dances, but it's at its heart,
about coming together and making
people realize that your future can
be whatever you want it to be.
Your traditions can be what you want them to be.
And you can be who you want to be.
Yeah!
[cheering]
OK, thinking about being who you want to be, let's
talk about Tennessee.
[razzing]
[laughs]
It's the first state, I think, to explicitly ban--
It's the first place that it passed.
--drag shows. Yeah, yeah.
And in public places where minors
are, or something like that.
What's your, but now it's happening all
over the place, right?
This is some new thing they've invented.
I'm sure that most of the Republicans who are,
they find stuff every once in a while to go after.
And I bet you most of them don't know what this is
about at all, have any idea.
There's things I don't actually,
I've never gone to NASCAR.
I don't know, I know what it's about.
There's a lot of stuff I don't go to, but what is this about?
What is their thing about?
Yeah, I mean, what is this about
is kind of the biggest question.
Because it's all so vague.
These bills are terrifying, because the language
is so open-ended.
And they are, and a lot of, and you're also
exactly right that a lot of these people
don't really understand what drag shows are.
And they don't have to, because this is all
sort of coded language for an attack
on the LGBTQIA+ community.
Sure.
And the wording of this bill talks about drag as adult
entertainment, which is insidious within itself to say
that someone dressing this way is only appropriate
for adults when they're not doing anything
that's adult-oriented.
And it also talks about them not
being able to do it within range of where
a minor could see, right?
Which means no pride parades, no outdoor pride events.
But it also means things like, what
if the window is viewable from the sidewalk in a drag bar.
I mean, it's all so subjective and it's all
so open to interpretation, that they can really kind
go wherever they want with it.
Not to mention the fact that the bill defines this
as this adult entertainment or adult cabaret as men or women
dressing as the, or doing male or female impersonation.
And that, within itself, is also something that,
who is interpreting this?
Bill Lee, who gets to decide whether he and a cheerleader
skirt counts or not?
Is he?
Who's Bill Lee?
So he is the one who, the governor
who the photo surfaced of now he's the one who
was passing all these laws.
He's behind this.
And the photo surfaced of him in high school
dressed as a cheerleader at some sort
of high school event.
And everyone started pointing this out and saying
this is pretty hypocritical.
And he said no, no, no, that doesn't count.
That is not of a prurient nature, that is not lewd.
This other, and so he has decided
that he is the person who gets to decide these things.
Oh, no, cheerleader outfits have never been
considered like sexual at all.
But within--
Wow.
But by that definition, even though most of us in 2023
understand that trans women are women
and trans men are men, there--
[cheering]
--this bill can be interpreted any number of ways.
And so if someone is enforcing this who doesn't believe that,
who is to say that trans person walking down
the street in public, if I view them as a male
or female impersonator and they're within the eyesight
of a child, well then, they're breaking the law by walking
to the grocery store.
That's terrifying.
When I was, and we talked about this a little bit.
When I was in the Senate, we were
reforming no Child Left Behind, which didn't work very well.
And I had a piece in it called Student Non-Discrimination
would protect LGBT kids, Q+ kids,
would give them the same rights as were given to other
kids by race and gender.
And I went to a colleague, a Republican colleague
who was a friend of mine, and asked him to sponsor this.
And what you could do is, if a kid was being bullied
for being LGBTQ, they could go to the principal
or the superintendent of schools,
and if they didn't get any, that they could sue.
They could sue, just like the other kids
I was talking about.
[applause]
And this Senator said to me, oh,
if they could do that, yeah, they'll just act more gay.
[groaning]
Well, first of all--
I mean.
And I said, I said, I said, no, no, no.
I don't want to say his name.
I said, no.
And he goes, oh, you watch.
Well, I hope he's watching right now
and knows that I am acting this gay no matter
what happens around me.
[cheering]
Well, well, kids in school, LGBT kids in school
have great absentee.
There's all kinds of bullying, obviously.
And this would really have helped kids.
No, it absolutely would.
And it didn't pass.
I can, from my personal experience, I
grew up in a small town in Connecticut.
I was very, very flamboyant and myself from a very young age.
And I was identified by other people as queer
before I even understood how to do that myself.
And I was mercilessly bullied in school.
And I went to my vice principal,
who told me that I should probably
tone it down a little.
So, thank you for working on that.
It's, I mean, it's--
[applause]
I, uh--
But--
It's terribly frustrating.
And the idea that children are somehow going to be
made more queer by access to queer culture,
I mean, I was very queer without any access.
And when I finally found drag, which is where, it was not
like, oh, that's a cool job, I want
to do that when I grow up.
It was, there's a container for who I am.
There's something out there for me.
And that saved my life.
I mean, suicide rates among queer kids
and suicidal ideation is more than half of trans
and non-binary kids have suicidal ideation, which
when I heard that statistic, I was like, that seems low,
because every queer person I know
has thought about suicide in their youth.
And I barely made it out of my childhood.
But I did, because I had a little bit of access
to this glimpse of a world outside that would accept me
for who I am, and not just in spite of who I am,
but because of who I am.
[cheering]
[applause]
Thank you.
And I'm going to come.
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