Many expected that this would happen.
All of that posturing. All of the time they spent justifying the law. And it blows up in their faces. Life is good. Happy Pride, y'all.
A federal judge says Tennessee’s first-in-the-nation law designed to place strict limits on drag shows is unconstitutional. In a 70-page ruling handed down late Friday night, U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker wrote that the law was both “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad." He also added that the statute encouraged “discriminatory enforcement.”
“There is no question that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. But there is a difference between material that is ‘obscene’ in the vernacular, and material that is ‘obscene’ under the law,” stated Parker, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump.
“Simply put, no majority of the Supreme Court has held that sexually explicit — but not obscene — speech receives less protection than political, artistic, or scientific speech.” The Memphis-based Friends of George’s filed the complaint in March, saying the law would negatively impact them because they produce “drag-centric performances, comedy sketches, and plays” with no age restrictions.
Chris Geidner, who covers court issues, said that the drag ban lost on all fronts. He also said:
Parker did not shy away from the underlying issues, either. “The word ‘drag’ never appears in the text of the AEA,” Parker wrote. “But the Court cannot escape that ‘drag’ was the one common thread in all three specific examples of conduct that was considered ‘harmful to minors,’ in the legislative transcript.”
After detailing that legislative history, as shown in four transcripts reviewed by the court, Parker found that “the legislative transcript strongly suggests that the AEA was passed for an impermissible purpose.”
That “impermissible purpose,” Parker found, was “chilling constitutionally-protected speech.”
In describing the concerns surrounding potential enforcement of the law, Parker seemed particularly well-attuned to the fears expressed by the plaintiffs in the case and others, writing, “The chance that an officer could abuse th[e] wide discretion [given for enforcing obscenity laws] is troubling given an art form like drag that some would say purposefully challenges the limits of society’s accepted norms.”
The ruling sends a direct message to all of those feeding off of hysteria about drag queens. We have now entered the phase in which those who spread and entertained the lie that drag queens are 'grooming' kids are going to have to defend their mess in a court of law. And under oath.
They've f@cked around for a long while. Now it's time for them to find out.
