A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the impending "drag ban" after siding with a Memphis-based gay theatre group that filed suit against the state of Tennessee.
“A federal judge in Tennessee has issued a temporary injunction delaying legislation due to come into effect on Saturday, which would prevent drag shows from taking place in public or where children might be present. In his decision, Judge Thomas Parker said the law was a violation of free speech.
The bill, which was passed by the state legislature earlier this year, states that ‘adult-oriented’ drag shows are ‘harmful to minors’. It placed strict restrictions on where these types of performances can take place, precluding anywhere that a child could be present.
The proposal of the law – which makes no mention of the word ‘drag’ – comes amid efforts by Republican lawmakers in at least 15 states to impose restrictions on theatrical performances by ‘male or female impersonators’. The legislation had also classified drag performers as adult entertainers, similar to strippers or exotic dancers.
Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Lee had argued that the law would protect children from being ‘potentially exposed to sexualized entertainment, to obscenity’. Instead, Parker sided with Friends of George’s, a Memphis LGBTQ theater company that filed a lawsuit against the state.
Other critics of the legislation have also said it was unconstitutional and that the concerns of the state were already addressed in pre-existing obscenity laws. It was also argued that the law had unfairly targeted the state’s LGBTQ community.
Lee had also come under fire earlier this year after he signed into law legislation which banned gender-affirming care in the state. He has faced criticism for perceived anti-LGBTQ stances, particularly after a photograph emerged of him dressed in women’s clothing in 1977. He called the comparison of the photograph and current drag show legislation proposals ‘ridiculous’”. -RT
Judge Thomas Parker, who serves as a judge for the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, put in writing that while states are "laboratories of democracy" that can "test laws and policies enacted by The People", these laws still have "constraints" from the U.S. Constitution, which in the First Amendment prohibits lawmakers from passing bills restricting the freedom of speech.
"The United States Constitution—a law that is supreme even to the Tennessee General Assembly's acts—has placed some issues beyond the reach of the democratic process”, Parker wrote. "First among them is the freedom of speech”.
The liberal interpretation that the architects of the First Amendment were guided by the principle of protecting the freedom to engage in and advocate for Christian immoralities such as bigamy, polygamy, and homosexuality is ahistorical as its original purpose was, in fact, to protect the right to exercise Christianity without state interference.
The concept of the unalienable right to free speech absolutism was only ever a means for the thought leaders of the Enlightenment to replace the authority of scripture and the Church in guiding society with their own political dogma.
Two of the foremost objectives of the Enlightenment were to legalize both blasphemy and usury, and the conjecturable freedom of speech and expression played an intrinsic role in the descent of Christianity from its dominant position in American society.