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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   17903 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026

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Dolly Parton might sadly be gone, but her legacy as one of America's greatest continues to live on in many ways. Today being a victory for free speech, with Texas Senate Bill 12, the "drag show ban" being ruled unconstitutional by Reagan appointee judge David Hittner for the pretty obvious reason that it violated the first amendment.

Dolly Parton's legacy is intertwined in this ruling in a few ways.

  1. She is cited by Hittner as one example of ‘erotic’ elements in countless popular performances that could be subject to both civil and criminal penalties under S.B. 12,” citing Dolly Parton specifically with "“as a voluptuous sex symbol because of her big hair, flamboyant clothes and breast exposure”.

  2. One of the plaintiffs in the case, Brigitte Bandit is a drag queen known for doing Dolly Parton impressions.

  3. Parton herself had given Bandit a guitar covered in rhinestones after Bandit had testified at the Texas capitol against the drag ban.

It is important to note that the drag ban was on its face, "neutral" and didn't mention drag at all. The phrasing used was "sexually oriented performances", as Texas had tried to get around any textual blatant viewpoint discrimination. But expanding it to cover typical drag shows as stated for the intent required such vague wording that it could also possibly impact things exactly like Dolly Parton. If a impersonation of Dolly Parton by a man is too sexual, than Dolly Parton is too sexual.

Some other examples Hittner used included Miley Cyrus twerking, Lady Gaga, some more revealing cosplays, and swimmers in attractive bikinis. And even before the law was put into action, apparently The Texas House Research Organization had specifically listed cheerleading alongside concerts and theatrical performances as potential threats. It's so broad and the problems so well known ahead of time that it's possible this law was intended to fail to begin with, that it was red meat for censor loving voters.

Regardless of intent, there's one interesting takeaway from this then. If the state has to textually prohibit a large berth of standard constitutionally protected mainstream entertainment in order to target and censor drag shows, then the problem exists entirely within the attempted censoring of drag shows. If any drag show had a unique and non protected issue, that particular issue can be dealt with specific and focused laws.

Hittner also includes an answer for those who don't wish for them or their kids to see a drag show. Don't go. If you find something offensive, instead of using big government to censor it just don't show up and watch it. You have every right to boycott whatever you please.

I rather doubt this will hold, any more than it has for the last fifteen years. Either they've learned enough wisdom to crush you or you'll go back to being brushed off into the dustbin of history. I'm quite certain you can't defend yourselves or anyone else, at this point.

But you're welcome to surprise me.

If a impersonation of Dolly Parton by a man is too sexual, than Dolly Parton is too sexual.

This argument is like saying that if an impersonation of Barack Obama by a white man is racist, then being Barack Obama is racist.

That doesn't follow. In many contexts the act of impersonation itself is sexual, above and beyond the fact that there's sexuality because of the target of the impersonation.

This argument is like saying that if an impersonation of Barack Obama by a white man is racist, then being Barack Obama is racist.

Yes, this argument would be equally bad. An impersonation of Barack Obama by a white man is not inherently racist. Also, racist speech is protected by the First Amendment.

In many contexts the act of impersonation itself is sexual, above and beyond the fact that there's sexuality because of the target of the impersonation.

I'm not sure this is true. But even if it were true, there are many contexts where impersonation is not intrinsically sexual, and the law provides no mechanism to distinguish these contexts. The law does not even mention impersonation as a factor to be considered in the analysis.

Also, racist speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Not if we simply call it "disorderly conduct".

Technically the jury found her speech towards the camera man rose to the level of "fighting words" (a First Amendment exception). She was acquitted on the original count against the child and his father.

You can search here for the case (I can't find a way to get a link). Case number 55-CR-25-6656. From the Jury instructions (document #58) as regards the charge she was convicted of:

DEFINED
Under Minnesota law, whoever, knowing or having reasonable grounds to know that it will tend to alarm, anger, or disturb others, or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct, or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others, is guilty of a crime.

ELEMENTS

The elements of this crime are:

First, the defendant engaged in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct, or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

If you find that the defendant's conduct consisted only of offensive, obscene, or abusive language, you must also find that the words used were “fighting words.” Speech is not “fighting words” merely because it is racist. “Fighting words” are words that constitute personally offensive epithets that, when spoken to the ordinary person, under the particular circumstances of the case, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction or incite an immediate breach of the peace by those to whom such words are addressed. The offense may be based upon the utterance of fighting words alone, without resulting in actual violence. The focus is upon the nature of the words and the circumstances in which they were spoken, rather than upon the actual response.

Second, the defendant knew or believed or had reasonable grounds to know that the conduct would, or could, tend to alarm, anger, disturb, provoke an assault by, or provoke a breach of the peace by others.

Third, the defendant's act took place in a public or private place.

Fourth, the defendant's act took place on or about April 28, 2025, in Olmsted County. If you find that each of these elements has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant is guilty. If you find that any element has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant is not guilty.

The instructions are identical for the count on which she was acquitted.

So is this going to be appealed or what?

The linked court database shows that an appeal was filed on July 30, one week after the conviction.

Technically the jury found her speech towards the camera man rose to the level of "fighting words" (a First Amendment exception). She was acquitted on the original count against the child and his father.

In other words, racist speech was not protected by the First Amendment, yes?

Are there fighting words for white people? Republicans? Christians?

No, speech intended to incite violence was not protected. Making it racist was a shortcut.

are there fighting words for white people?

Uh, yeah. Most of the classic cases are white-on-white. Stuff like “god damned fascist” is obviously outdated, but “fucking pig” still counts. This Montana case has some of the more recent examples. Here’s one from South Carolina. I don’t actually know who (if anyone’s in this scenario was white, but the fighting words consisted of insulting a man’s mother to his and her faces.

Fighting words have to thread a needle. Start with all the times that someone talked shit with the intent of provoking a fight. Remove all the ones which didn’t result in any arrest. Now take out those which turned into assault because the speaker took a swing first. And the ones where he made a “true threat” and ran into a different law. And the ones where he was drunk or high in public. All of those get their own charges, making the speech beside the point.

We’re left with a handful of cases from, like, public nuisance laws. They don’t usually make it to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has been backing away from the fighting words doctrine since 1970. Since states can't enact a stricter doctrine than the one the federal government uses, I doubt this will survive appeal.

The Roberts Court will bend over backwards not to protect the right to say the n-word.

Honestly, this shouldn't reach the Court. The appeals court has all they need to reverse. After which, the SC just denies cert.

The Supreme Court is free to amuse themselves in whatever way they see fit.
Meanwhile, in the real world...
I don't believe in the First Amendment. That is, I do not believe it would significantly protect me from the things I would actually need protecting from if I were to exercise the rights it purports to enshrine, and convolutions about how the extremely awful things that would have a very high probability of happening to me don't count because they weren't what the First Amendment was intended for don't actually interest me.

I cannot speak freely. I have not been able to speak freely for a very long time, and I do not think this is likely to change in the foreseeable future. Therefore, I do not care if you cannot speak freely either. If the First Amendment is a dead letter for me, and it is, then it should be a dead letter for you too. If it isn't, then that is a problem that needs fixing, and it's pretty clear to me that it's not going to be fixed by the restoration of strong principles and norms of robust free speech and mutual toleration, so that leaves the other way.

Usually, the counter-argument is something along the lines of "you just want to be able to use the N-word without consequences". But this could not be further from the truth! I do not think I have ever spoken or written the n-word to another person, and the only time I've actually spoken it aloud when alone was when singing along to Nina Gordon's cover of NWA, many years ago. I would never do that now, of course, because it is simply, obviously true that words are powerful magic and can ruin your whole life if used incautiously, and obviously I don't want my life ruined. I have no interest in gaining protection from dark magic I gain no benefit from employing in any case; I would much, much rather see illegitimate protection removed from other classes of dark-magic practitioners who now enjoy immunity for their abuses.

I do not think I have ever spoken or written the n-word

I've never said the n-word. To the point where I haven't and even can't say it aloud when I'm totally alone, despite intellectually not believing in magic words.

My wife jokes that it's because I'm scared (((they))) are listening.

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This. For the most part, drag queens don't just "look like" women. If that's all they were doing, most people wouldn't care (and how would you even know?). Instead, they do a ridiculously exagerated caricature of women. Ridiculously stuffed breasts, buttocks, falsetto voice, etc. Some have described it as "girl face," like the "black face" that people used to do in minstrel shows to make fun of black people. It's completely different from how actual trans women dress, or how actors dress to present as a realistic woman. It makes for an incredibly cheesy, campy effect, and I'm tired of pretending that it's not in horrible taste. We don't have to ban it all together, but we can limit it to the more fringe parts of society, like strip clubs outside of town, rather than welcoming it into public streets, libraries, and everywhere else where we're forced to look at it without consent.

@magicalkittycat

Some have described it as "girl face," like the "black face" that people used to do in minstrel shows to make fun of black people. [...] We don't have to ban it all together, but we can limit it to the more fringe parts of society, like strip clubs outside of town, rather than welcoming it into public streets, libraries, and everywhere else where we're forced to look at it without consent.

I hate the way that "consent" language has infiltrated society at all levels. There's just a gradual erosion of people's understanding of private ownership, and public spaces. Whether it's oil pipelines, AI data centers or a new Buc-ees, everyone seems to think they should have a say in how private corporations use their own private property.

Black face is legal, and "girl face" is legal. If a privately owned business open to the public wants to put on a minstrel show or a drag show they are legally allowed to do that everywhere in the United States. The public is also allowed to boycott such businesses, if they want to. Stop being lazy and leveraging the government to do your work for you. Vote with your wallet, and don't frequent businesses that do things you find distasteful. If a public library has a drag show, go to your town council meetings and get the libraries defunded or whatever. Don't just hope that we'll all ban a thing you happen to dislike.

I've seen "you're violating my consent!" type language applied to copyright, immigration, spam, zoning regulations. It's everywhere. Laundering "I don't like this" into "I'm being raped." Hate it so much.

It really makes me feel like my consent is being violated.

On this meta note, I've seen a sort of parallel here with "consent" and "denial" that I find really odd.

In the past, I've seen some AGW-skeptics claim that the anti-AGW-activists calling them "climate deniers" is a dirty attempt at associating them with "holocaust deniers" because they're both using "denier." This, despite the fact that "denier" has a very well known, basic non-holocaust- (and non-AGW-)related definition in English that has no derogatory connotations whatsoever and only negative connotations in the sense that "denying" something means "negating" something.

More recently, I've seen some [people who consider AI training on copyrighted material without consent to be perfectly ethical] claim that the [people who consider AI training on copyrighted material without consent to be unethical] pointing out that the former are pro-violation-of-"consent" is a dirty attempt at associating them with rapists - i.e. people who violate sexual consent - because they're both relating to the word "consent." This, despite the fact that "consent" has a very well known, basic non-sex- (and non-copyright-)related definition in English.

Ironically, perhaps, these complaints are, in themselves, attempts to smear someone else as engaging in bad faith tactics merely through association of the same vocabulary.

That said, I haven't seen this that much. Just more than I would have expected and certainly far more than I would like.

I don't actually think consent is an ordinary word. It has a legalese connotation, and really does come up most frequently for ordinary people in the context of sexual consent.

Almost always the words "agreement", "signing a contract", "permission" or "asking me/someone" would be more casual ways to refer to this concept.

Part of the problem is the strange mismatch of expectations. If I say, "My neighbor starts mowing the lawn at 9 AM without my consent", it implies that there is some reason to think your neighbor should need your consent, but unless there are local noise ordinances or something, why should your neighbor need consent for that?

I don't actually think consent is an ordinary word. It has a legalese connotation, and really does come up most frequently for ordinary people in the context of sexual consent.

I suppose it's not too far from "molest" which is also an ordinary word with an ordinary non-sexual meaning, but which almost always gets used sexually these days. "Consent" is perhaps not an "ordinary" word, but I think most people who have been to the hospital as adults are at least familiar with "informed consent" or "consent forms" which have nothing to do with sex. And I think this is to enough of an extent that it's not justified to accuse someone who uses the term "consent" as trying to smuggle in sexual implications.

Part of the problem is the strange mismatch of expectations. If I say, "My neighbor starts mowing the lawn at 9 AM without my consent", it implies that there is some reason to think your neighbor should need your consent, but unless there are local noise ordinances or something, why should your neighbor need consent for that?

This is the true issue that should be being brought up in the example I provided. The disagreement with AI training on copyright-protected works without consent is whether or not consent is required. As someone who believes that there's nothing unethical about it, I openly say that I am freely violating the consent of the copyright-holders (and support Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, Meta, etc. doing so) and that I feel no guilt over this, because their consent doesn't matter. Much like your neighbor doesn't need yours in your example. That's the point to make, not the one claiming that invoking the copyright-holders' consent is a way of smearing oneself or AI companies as rapist-adjacent.

Can I put syrup clubs anywhere? Can I allow kids to enter the strip club?

Can I put syrup clubs anywhere?

I prefer my syrup clubs next to a Waffle House.

Can I allow kids to enter the strip club?

I don't think this is a valid comparison, since drag is not inherently sexual or "adult."

Watch an episode of Ru Paul's Drag Race. It has a rating of TV 14, there's nothing that bad in it. Certainly nothing that would scar an older teen.

Drag as a category is similar to live music performances as a category, there is a range of salaciousness. On one hand you'll have performers like the Pussycat Dolls or Sabrina Carpenter who try to titilate and provoke, and on the other hand you'll have Christian rock which is squeaky clean and wholesome. Should we just blindly ban all music performances because some are 18+?

Ru Paul is degenerate. Just like syrup and strip clubs. It isn’t just about prurient interests.

If a privately owned business open to the public wants to put on a minstrel show or a drag show they are legally allowed to do that everywhere in the United States.

And what if they don't want to? What if they don't want to bake the cake? This appeal to freedom of association only ever flows in one direction.

I might point out that masterpiece cakeshop has won all of their court cases.

The problem is the asymmetry of legal remedies for the right and the left. When the left wins a case, it's done, they get to do whatever it is they wanted to do. When the right wins a case, there's another case which starts things all over again.

That's simply not true. Look at Roe v. Wade. After it was decided, the right spent decades trying every legal variant they could think of to get around it. Every side plays legal games.

Roe v. Wade is a popular allusion, but it's a really bad comparison. The right didn't spend decades trying every legal variant they could think of. The day after Roe v. Wade dropped, every single county in the country just treated abortion as legal through the first half of gestation. The closest immediate challenge was Danforth, and the restrictions there were either well outside of Roe's text (spousal approval, parental approval for minors) or within an area Roe specifically entertained (a methods-based ban on saline injection that the medical community had just started disfavoring in preference to prostaglandin and, the next year, D&E). Thornburgh was the sort of waiting period law and information-passing that The_Nybbler would consider an outright blessing compared to what New Jersey does for his interests. Hell, Akron did a specific thing Blackmun gave as acceptable (hospital requirements) and lost on it anyway because they had ill motive about it.

Most were just plainly outside of Roe, and not even arguably. Several major SCOTUS battles focused on federal funding, like Beal, Maher, Poelker, and the Hyde Amendment, but Roe never held that public facilities had to perform abortions. Connecticut v. Menillo had a state court invalidate a pre-Roe conviction for an unlicensed 'hobbyist' abortionist, and SCOTUS had to step in to say that Roe didn't mean randos could just go around pretending to be doctors for the purpose of abortion. Bigelow v. Virginia (in addition to being one of my go-to examples for why New Jersey can burn in hell) was about a statute that dated back to 1878, and turned on the First Amendment question.

It was only after replacing almost the entire SCOTUS bench and producing a widespread new judicial philosophy over two decades that we saw Casey, and even Casey was still futzing with the edges of how interest-balancing was done. It took another decade before you started to see serious efforts to actually go after its central ruling, and another two past that to actually overturn Roe.

Don't get me wrong; those were legal games. But they're a separate class from politicians in multiple states responding to Bruen the week of with press conferences explicitly stating they were going to make carry permits useless to carry anywhere (and then adding injury to insult by not issuing carry permits either), or Masterpiece Cake Shop by trying to support even dumber activist lawsuits with clearer malicious intent against the exact same target, or Calce after Caetano.

Abortion is about the only partial exception, but the important thing is that for most of the life of that decision, none of those things worked. The right would pass laws, they'd be struck down without having effect. Even now it's easier to get an abortion as a resident of Texas than a firearm as a resident of New Jersey.

Texas is just going to ban drag shows again, with slightly different wording.

If they try, the drag shows will still happen and the law will be stayed until it is dismissed. Nobody will spend more than a few hours in jail.

I'm on the record elsewhere on the Motte saying that I would prefer to limit non-discrimination law to essential domains like housing, banking and hospitals. I don't think governments need to force gay wedding cakes at gunpoint.

Not OP, but I think there's a difference between the freedom to provide a given service or not, and the freedom to refuse service to particular customers. Much as it should be clubs' choice whether they put on minstrel shows or drag shows, it should be a bakery's choice whether or not they want to sell rainbow-colored pride cakes. But the proper comparison for whether the bakery can refuse to sell a standard wedding cake to a pair of gay fiancés isn't that: it's whether the minstrel club can bar black people, or the gay club bar straight people, from entry.

Now you might argue that all of these fall under freedom-of-association, and I can certainly respect freedom-of-association absolutism as far as it goes. But they still seem like two easily-distinguished subcategories where I don't think you need to be biased in any specific direction to support one and not the other.

But the proper comparison for whether the bakery can refuse to sell a standard wedding cake to a pair of gay fiancés isn't that: it's whether the minstrel club can bar black people, or the gay club bar straight people, from entry.

But of course if they want to bar people with incorrect political views, freedom-of-association is right back on the table.

It’s a fuzzy line.

What if the person isn’t baking a cake but officiating weddings, should they be forced to accommodate gay ones as long as they follow the same script as straight ones?

On the other hand, the person baking cakes won’t know whether their clients are gay without obnoxious vetting which would hurt their business. A man and woman can walk into the store and order a cake, then give it to their gay friends.

I believe freedom of association should work like that: a seller can refuse “service”, but once they provide it, can’t restrict the buyer or force them to retract.

Doesn’t zoning control where strip clubs can set up shop almost everywhere? What’s the reason that this same principle couldn’t be applied to drag shows?

Municipal govts. are allowed to ban strip clubs from certain zones because they have studies showing that strip clubs have undesirable "secondary effects" of increased crime. Quote from the latest (2002) case:

The central component of the 1977 study is a report on city crime patterns provided by the Los Angeles Police Department. That report indicated that, during the period from 1965 to 1975, certain crime rates grew much faster in Hollywood, which had the largest concentration of adult establishments in the city, than in the city of Los Angeles as a whole. For example, robberies increased 3 times faster and prostitution 15 times faster in Hollywood than citywide.

It seems like that would lead to a lumper/splitter problem. If you have to ban the exact same thing that leads to crime, you might end up banning strip clubs that have between six and fourteen letters in their name that are open at least to 1 AM but to not later than 2 AM, just like qualified immunity only ever applies to the exact same thing from a previous case.

Even that ruling doesn't sound like it goes that far, as seen by the reference to "adult establishments" rather than to only strip clubs specifically. Why wouldn't a drag show also fit into the category "adult establishments", if it is determined that drag shows are sexual? (Or would you say that it's a show, not an establishment, and that therefore strip shows at places that often do other things are not covered as adult establishments either?)

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

Maybe it's bad precedent, but it is precedent.

The municipality's evidence must fairly support the municipality's rationale for its ordinance. If plaintiffs fail to cast direct doubt on this rationale, either by demonstrating that the municipality's evidence does not support its rationale or by furnishing evidence that disputes the municipality's factual findings, the municipality meets the standard set forth in Renton. If plaintiffs succeed in casting doubt on a municipality's rationale in either manner, the burden shifts back to the municipality to supplement the record with evidence renewing support for a theory that justifies its ordinance.

But you see the Motte and Bailey here, right? We're not just talking about private businesses. If the drag queens would keep it there, there'd be no problem (and most of us wouldn't even know that it exists). But they want to move it into public spaces, where we wouldn't normally expect to encounter sexually explicit acts. If I were to walk into the public library or downtown main street naked, I'd get arrested for public indecency, but the drag queens seem to argue that this is some sort of human right, even though it seems very much like a fetish for them.

I can't exactly "boycott" every single public space, and even if I did, I might actually have an opinion on whether its good for them to be used in putting children into someone's fetish play. At some poine, it's simply easier to do a blanket ban rather than try to play small town politics over every single posible location. And yes, when we're talking about people trying to force their sexuality on the rest of us, I do think that usingi the language of consent is appropriate.

If the drag queens would keep it there, there'd be no problem (and most of us wouldn't even know that it exists). But they want to move it into public spaces

Do they?

Are drag queens themselves pushing to be in public places or some other adjacent but still different set of people who are doing that?

"Drag Queens" aren't something that people are born as, or that they find themselves becoming through puperty and no fault of their own, or any of the other categorizations that are used to paint gays and muslims and other protected classes as blameless and without agency in choosing their behavior.

Any time a "Drag Queen" does anything, you can be 100% certain that he wants to be there and he wants to do it.

Who are you accusing of forcing the drag queens at gunpoint to do shows for toddlers at public libraries?

That's a completely different claim. Is it the drag queens who are the initiators or is it the activists around them, the ones arranging the event and the library staff?

There's a big difference between

"Hey, you really should come to read in this event. I've reserved the space, done the arrangements and convinced the staff." "Oh, ok, I guess I'll come, it might be fun."

vs

"Hey, I really want to do this thing. Is there any way I can make it happen?"

This is Jonathan Hamilt, co-founder of Drag Story Hour National and the first drag queen to read for Drag Story Hour in New York City. So it does kind of seem founded at least in part by drag queens (the other founder is a lesbian dating a transman.)

I think sex has always been the weakest link of free speech in Western societies. There was a long-standing fragile cope with the "know it when I see it" "rule" for porn, but the bottom line is that once sex starts becoming involved, even the most principled free-speech advocate runs out of tolerance for views that go against their preference. Being a drag queen is "speech" in the same sense that performance art is (it is meant to convey something), but it is speech that evokes the horror of the object of your sexual desire being replaced by a male caricature of it, so you label it "indecent" and invoke the right to not be exposed to it. What is the principled way to distinguish this from an argument that speech for any political system that relates to human sexuality at all is likewise "indecent" as it may invoke sexual horror in those who are repelled by some aspect of the system's programme? If you can be protected from disgust at drag queens, why can't a blue-hair campus activist be protected from disgust at Christians?

Free expression and the freedom from exposure can coexist: places advertising sex in abstract (like "NSFW") opaque to bystanders unless they consent.

In public spaces I think it should be the town that decides what's allowed. A problem with today's society is that large states and larger governments intervene in things that should be local: unless it's like child abuse or slavery, people can move (and I don't think drag shows fall into child abuse, although admittedly I've never seen one, I'm thinking more severe cases like physical assault, neglect, and deprivation).

I do think a "freedom of speech + freedom from exposure" set of norms is conceivable, but doing that in a principled manner, too, would require deep changes to how societies are organised. You do get at a key problem in suggesting that the town should decide (because you can't unify one individual's freedom from exposure with another's freedom of speech and his audience, if all three+ of them have to share a space), but (1) why is the town the natural unit and (2) would the results you get really be that much more satisfactory for anyone, if acceptable exposure were fully devolved to towns? You would get quite a lot of blue towns, in which drag queens and Democratic politics are considered decent but Christianity and Republican politics (all rape PTSD triggers!) are not, and red towns, with the converse; and many of them would have a pretty large captive minority of people with their speech much more constrained in practice than it is at the moment.

  1. Towns decide public spaces because they own public spaces. Individuals decide their own spaces (house or apartment interior, car interior, and exteriors to limited extent), groups of towns or states decide buildings that serve multiple towns (e.g. waste treatment plant, nuclear power plant; car exteriors should also be state or nation mandated, because the vast majority will drive between towns, and many will drive between states).

  2. You would have those towns, but many towns (including some cities) have roughly an even split, so I expect they’d be more reasonable. Also, I think the town shouldn’t dictate what people do within their own home or apartment room, although it would be hard to prevent them, it would be hard for them to enforce anything.

That sounds pretty backwards relative to what happened. The blue-hair campus activist didn't use the taboos around sex to argue for political censorship, they spent the better half of the last century using the principle of free speech to take apart all taboos, including the ones around sex, and once that allowed them to get strong enough, they turned around to impose their own taboos on people they promised "liberation" to.

Even outside of that, they don't limit themselves to demands of being protected from views they find disgusting, they demand the right to impose their views on people who find them disgusting.

I never claimed that this is actually the argument that blue-hair campus activists used, historically, to argue for censorship; only that they could use that argument, and it's not clear how you would refuse it on principled ground while allowing the argument against drag queens. The Schelling fence around free speech can only be reliably drawn around all speech, including speech that is optimised to make you imagine sexual scenarios that you find highly uncomfortable.

I never claimed that this is actually the argument that blue-hair campus activists used, historically, to argue for censorship; only that they could use that argument, and it's not clear how you would refuse it on principled ground while allowing the argument against drag queens

That battle has been fought and lost. There is no hypothetical "what if they used that argument" to consider. They did use that argument, and they won. The principle you are appealing to does not exist in any practical sense. Though maybe the real issue is that I'm just tired, tired of fighting this same battle forever. Eventually a person despairs of ever living in peace.

That's true. I can't really give you a logical argument for why it seems much worse to watch someone else's sex acts than to watch someone else's religious rituals. Nonetheless... it is, and I think the vast majority of people would agree with me on that. I suppose this is one of those "I know it when I see it" things, where the law runs into basic human nature in a less-than-perfectly-logical way.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't mind so much if they did it as peformance art in specially marked artistic venues. I have a very high tolerance for that sort of thing! My objection is more that they try to smuggle it in as innocuous behavior that should be accepted everywhere, which seems dishonest when it's obviously controversial.

It's a very obvious motte/bailey, isn't it? I've seen people argue Monty Python or WWI/II British crosssdressing humour is the same thing as all modern drag shows, and if people were fine with the former, they're hypocrites to not be fine with the latter.

being naked in public is different than doing black face in public so that is its own motte and bailey. If your opinion is that "girl face"/drag in public is more like black face in public then if black face is legal it follows "girl face"/drag should also be legal. If your opinion is that "girl face"/drag is more like being naked in public then your opinion sounds about right to me.

I notice that "incredibly cheesy, campy effect" and "horrible taste" on one comment becomes "sexually explicit acts" and "fetish play" on the next. I'm sure there is some level of "girl face"/drag in public that you are ok with on a case-by-case basis. Personally I can tell you there have been plenty of incredibly cheesy, campy, and horrible taste outfits by clearly straight women that I kinda just huff my nose and ignore it, I certainly would not ignore sexually explicit acts and fetish play.

I think it is legitimate for you to participate in things like local schoolboard elections, or local city council elections to get performances that use your tax dollars shut down. I don't think it is appropriate to restrict everyone's freedoms because you're unwilling to take the time to research your local schoolboard elections. (I'm a libertarian, and I would generally prefer for government spending and policy decisions to be as local as possible, largely to avoid the incentive to keep making a bigger and bigger administrative state that is impossible to dismantle.)

I can't exactly "boycott" every single public space

Are these events really happening at every public space? I've wandered through various commercial neighborhoods in my city, and I've never just randomly stumbled upon a drag show. I'm sure on any given weekend, I would find one if I was determined to, but randomly having them happen has never really been an issue.

And yes, when we're talking about people trying to force their sexuality on the rest of us, I do think that usingi the language of consent is appropriate.

Drag doesn't have to be sexual though. Shakespearean actors did drag, and it wasn't sexual. English Pantomime had drag, and it wasn't sexual.

While I don't necessarily endorse drag shows for elementary schoolers, I think that a more toned down drag performance could, in theory, be appropriate, if that is what parents and the local school board want to do with their local community resources. I think it would also be appropriate to give parents the opportunity to opt out, as is often done for things like sex ed, or occasionally for other controversial parts of a school curriculum.

I think it is legitimate for you to participate in things like local schoolboard elections, or local city council elections to get performances that use your tax dollars shut down.

So why is it legitimate to ask for action at the local/district level, but not at the state level? That seems fairly arbitary. In fact, in the US legal system, states have rather more power than local districts, so it makes a lot more sense to act at the state level. In more practical terms: Most of us don't have the time or ability to fight lawsuits, so the only way it gets done is to pool resources and fight it at the state level. This is one of many issues where I think libertarians are just kind of naiive to how the real world works.

Are these events really happening at every public space?

No, of course not. In normal life it doesn't bother me that much either. But that cuts both ways... apparently this is such a minor issue that people can live without it. What's the harm if we just ban it? It seems like it would give a lot of people peace of mind, while only harming a very small minority. They could always move to California or New Hampshire if they really, really need to live as drag queens.

Drag doesn't have to be sexual though. Shakespearean actors did drag, and it wasn't sexual. English Pantomime had drag, and it wasn't sexual.

While I don't necessarily endorse drag shows for elementary schoolers

It doesn't have to be but... in modern practice, it almost always is. Nobody would really have an issue with shakespear festivals casting men in women's roles or whatever. But what the drag queens seem to really fight for is obviously a sex fetish for them, and I'm tired of having to look the other way and pretend like this is some high class theater thing. Really, it's fine, we can just ban this and it's not the road to slavery, it's just the road to a more civilized public life.

So why is it legitimate to ask for action at the local/district level, but not at the state level?

Because states have too many people. It’s easier to move towns than states because you can visit your old spaces faster, and there would be small groups that wouldn’t find refuge in any state, but may be large enough to take over a town.

Like @vorpa-glavo’s comment I support individualism when feasible, but individual homeowners aren’t rich enough for their own private park, library, etc. or soundproofing, road maintenance, etc. Towns are, so they shou

What's the harm if we just ban it? It seems like it would give a lot of people peace of mind, while only harming a very small minority. They could always move to California or New Hampshire if they really, really need to live as drag queens.

You do realize that this exact same argument applies to this forum, right?

So why is it legitimate to ask for action at the local/district level, but not at the state level? That seems fairly arbitary.

I mean, I'm partial to something like Scott Alexander's Archipelago, where aside from some high level rules everyone has to follow, everyone is free to pursue their own version of happiness, preferably in community with other people.

State level bans are preferable to federal bans, but I would prefer many bans to be at the city or county level, if they're going to happen at all, for two reasons: 1) the population of the United States has become less mobile and doesn't move as often, which means that the ideal of Archipelago, where someone can move to a different "island" that better represents their values is becoming less of a reality, and 2) I just think cities are more natural community-like units for policy to be carried out in than states.

Sure, and I think most people are partial to something like that in principle. The problem is... externalities exist. None of us can practice our own perfect freedom without infringing on our neighbors, at least a little. We're not actually living in an archipelago, we're living in a town where we all choke on each other's cigarette smoke and get stuck behind each other in traffic. And that means, we have to hide our shame so we don't traumatize kids.

Instead, they do a ridiculously exagerated caricature of women.

How is that any different from a significant amount of all theatre performances, other than concentrating on a specific large and unhomogenous group?

I have never been forced to look at a drag show without my consent. I'm in my 40s.

I agree they are modern minstrel shows caricaturing women. They are not in good taste. And that's fine and should be legal. I would support court challenges against a law limiting drag shows to strip clubs outside of town.

It's completely different from how actual trans women dress

If only that were true. Every ex-man I know has bad fashion sense (they all do the falsetto thing, too).

If they looked like this, I'd be a lot more OK with it; if I had to cross-dress in casual [or business casual] environments, that is what I would select. Or just the underwear, for a more privately/inherently sexual example that is invisible unless you're doing it wrong (and provides the majority of any sensory benefits for those so declined- even the male attempts at a "panty"-style brief don't work because they're still made of heavier cloth and have a seam parallel to the axis of dangle, where the female ones are made of lighter material, fit a bit baggier on men, and the front is completely flat and seamless with nothing to bother the relevant areas).

To the point I'm not really sure you could meaningfully call that cross-dressing; it's just shorts with one less leg hole and integrated undergarment, and certain models are nearly built for men to wear them (if the fit was slightly different; a little tight in the crotch and wide in the hips for obvious reasons, but that's par for the course when you're wearing something not actually meant for you).

But it's not just putting the clothing on because I felt like it, it's being seen/others' reaction to putting the clothing on, whereas that's something I would want to avoid at all costs. And that's hard to prosecute because that's a woman thing (and ironically one of the stronger arguments for transgenderism being treated as a legitimate mental condition)- literally, the fashion police- which perhaps is part of why 'no crossdressing' [implication: no bad crossdressing] was at one time a reasonable compromise.

Huh. I wonder what extent that drives a lot of the differing reactions : I've worked with trans women that would be the spitting image of that link, modulo a purple sweater if it's winter, and even a lot of fairly obnoxiously political trans women tend closer to its look than to drag.

Historically, there was a lot more overlap between day-to-day trans people and drag, largely downstream of WPATH v6's three-to-six-month lived experience requiring hyperfeminine behavior by someone not yet allowed to do anything but clothing, but that's faded pretty aggressively over a decade ago.

I've worked with trans women that would be the spitting image of that link, modulo a purple sweater if it's winter

Judging by what I have hanging in my closet I am intimately familiar with the concept (and why you would do that).

But I can't wear that outside (or on camera), for the same reasons I would have problems conducting same-sex PDA- others have plenty of good, evolved, biological reasons to find that disgusting and off-putting, and I feel that's going to get in the way of my other objectives. (And even worse, it also marks me as belonging to the faction that gets off on making that fact everyone else's problem, so I believe I would alienate both the traditionalists and the low-information liberals upon whose support I largely depend. Something about "fisher of men".)

So now I get to suffer the "if my initial conditions and social circle were different I conceivably could have gone that way" outlook for a very good reason, and get to be just as much on the back foot on that topic as any of the dozen other principled libertarian is. I guess the only prosecution for bad actors is that they simply find themselves mysteriously excluded, but the State (and its supporters) are naturally only interested in making sure I bear the costs for those bad actors.

The point, though, is that Dolly Parton's public persona was also a camp, over-the-top hyperfeminine caricature of a normal woman.

She said in interviews that she is playing a persona and that's not her true self. Which is impressive since she's seemed so genuine.

Yeah, but she pulled it off.

It makes for an incredibly cheesy, campy effect, and I'm tired of pretending that it's not in horrible taste.

Speech that's cheesy, campy, and in horrible taste is protected by the First Amendment.

But "protected" doesn't guarantee you a printing press, or any sort of venue. The drag queens seem to think they have an inherent right to perform at public buildings and are shocked that they might be turned down.

I don't see how that pertains to the law being discussed. Of course private venues can turn people down. The law bans drag shows that were not turned down by the venue.

It's completely different from how actual trans women dress

Well, some and some.

This argument is like saying that if an impersonation of Barack Obama by a white man is racist, then being Barack Obama is racist.

This is not about law, that's just how society describes things. If the law were to ban a white man from Obama impersonating, it would be an illegal and unconstitutional law regardless of how racist he may or may not be.

And In the same way in the terms of the law, it is supposed to be clear and equal standards. Anything that bans "looks just like Dolly Parton" as overly sexual should also ban Dolly Parton as overly sexual.

And In the same way in the terms of the law, it is supposed to be clear and equal standards. Anything that bans "looks just like Dolly Parton" as overly sexual should also ban Dolly Parton as overly sexual.

This is a relatively recent development in constitutional law. Standards for what did or did not count as obscenity were vague, hence the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) "I know it when I see it" line from Jacobellis v. Ohio. And even with the Miller test (established in 1973), it still is dependent on things like "contemporary community standards" and rather subjective judgements like whether or not something has artistic/literary/whatever value.

This is one of people's big problems with Hananiaites like yourself, you treat Civil Rights era jurisprudence and standards as if they were the only way to view the constitution and the only way the country can be correctly or properly governed, despite such changes being only about half a century old. The country, with largely the same constitution, was governed radically differently before the 60s and 70s, with the courts prior to that era interpreting the same constitutional text vastly differently than you and your ilk insist it must be interpreted, and did so for 200 years.

Insisting on 60s to 90s liberalism as a moral absolute is just silly.

...you treat Civil Rights era jurisprudence and standards as if they were the only way to view the constitution and the only way the country can be correctly or properly governed, despite such changes being only about half a century old. The country, with largely the same constitution, was governed radically differently before the 60s and 70s....

It was governed, as described by Mark Rosenfelder, such that:

  • In 1951, a black family headed by Harvey Clark, a WW2 veteran and a university graduate, rented an apartment in Cicero, Illinois— a couple miles southeast of here, in fact. He was hassled and beat up by police officers as he tried to move in. He successfully sued to keep the police from preventing the move. Then came the three-day riot, in which 4000 whites mobbed his apartment building, threw stones, destroyed the family's possessions, and finally set fire to the building. Clark himself most regretted the destruction of his piano, which he had bought for his daughter by working overtime.
  • Or there's the case of Malcolm Little. While his mother was still pregnant with him, Klansmen surrounded their house and broke all the windows. His father and three of his uncles were killed by white men, one by a lynch mob. His home in Nebraska was burned by another mob. Malcolm's early childhood was hard, but he did very well in high school— he got top grades and was elected class president. One of his teachers asked him what he might do for a career. Malcolm answered that he thought he might like to be a lawyer. The teacher smiled and told him “A lawyer— that's no realistic goal for a n████r.” He suggested carpentry. Not surprisingly, Malcolm decided that the white man's world was a conspiracy to prevent black progress, enforced with smiles at the top and terrorism at the bottom. Under those circumstances, why not turn to crime? He did, but later he got religion and changed his name to X.
  • August Wilson tells a story about his mother. There was a trivia contest on the radio, in the '50s, where the prize was a new washing machine— something she sorely needed. She knew the answer, called in, and won the prize. But when they learned that she was black, they wouldn't give it to her. They proposed giving her a gift certificate to the Salvation Army instead; she could get a used machine there.
  • Or Commissioner Bull Connor in Birmingham, who used attack dogs and fire hoses against peaceful demonstrators led by pastor Martin Luther King Jr (1963). King was a Christian minister, and advocated non-violence and even non-resistance to violent provocation; four years later, he was murdered. During the Birmingham campaign, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed, killing four teenage girls. The Klansman who did it was found not guilty, though he was fined for possession of dynamite without a permit.
  • Clyde Ross grew up in Mississippi, where the law was unavailable to blacks, and whites simply stole any black wealth they wanted. (Ross had a horse when he was ten. White men took it from him.) Ross moved his family to Chicago in 1947, where he could vote and get a house. Regular mortgages weren't given to blacks; instead an operator got him a contract house— where the householder was responsible for all upkeep, but could lose the house if he missed a single payment. It was federal policy to deny ordinary mortgages to blacks.
  • James Zwerg, a white divinity student, was one of the Freedom Riders who in 1961 rode segregated buses and refused to sit in the back of the bus. They were met by a mob in Montgomery; Zwerg was held against the wall by a group of men while men punched him and women clawed his face. Some women held up their toddlers so the little ones could attack him too.
  • Fannie Lou Hamer was a black woman who dared to register to vote. She was thrown off the plantation where she lived; when she stayed with a friend she was shot at; her house was assessed a $9000 water bill though it had no running water; she was arrested, beaten savagely, and sexually molested in jail.
  • Nichelle Nichols was once kicked out of a hotel in Salt Lake City, where she had a reservation, for being black. She couldn't find another hotel, either— she found a family to stay with. When she was working on Star Trek, the guard at one gate in the studio lot wouldn't let her in, for being black. It's really really low to mess with Lt. Uhura.

Multiply by 23 million.

Liberals think this is no way to treat people.

But it goes way beyond that. Some researchers claim that liberals aren't motivated by feeling of moral disgust, but I disagree. Liberals think incidents like these are disgusting. Racism is viscerally wrong, it's unacceptable, and it needs to stop.

Putting an end to such horrors may have nth-order effects that some of us don't like, but they are vastly less bad than the status quo (which had long since lost its status).

Some women held up their toddlers so the little ones could attack him too.

Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Do you think this sounds even remotely credible? If the author was willing to include the likes of that, what else is he willing to exaggerate or make up?

If the people 100 years ago heard of a million women cheering for an infanticidal mother and miming strangling their own toddlers in support, they probably wouldn't believe it either.

Honestly I'm still having trouble with that one.

Do you think this sounds even remotely credible?

Sadly, I find it very credible. I wish to G-d it were not!

Given how often we've seen claims about what happened to someone wildly differ from what video (and/or physical) evidence shows, I think at least the tiniest amount of incredulity would be useful on your part.

See how half the eyewitness testimony (and all of the physical evidence) in the Michael Brown case was counter to the "Hands up, don't shoot!" narrative. Similar situation with Trayvon Martin. Or just start watching bodycam videos.

Have you been around toddlers?

As so often, the demand for outrageous wrongdoings by the outgroup is high.

but they are vastly less bad than the status quo

I hate Jim Crow laws and the related horrors around them, but it's far from clear that destroying freedom of association was the only (or best) way to get rid of them, and it's unclear if the ultimate nth order effects from the CRA will have been worth it.

In any case, I was talking about civil rights era changes to speech and obscenity jurisprudence, not race.

In any case, I was talking about civil rights era changes to speech and obscenity jurisprudence, not race.

They're the same picture.

The ideals of 1776 were, for a long time, treated as having an unwritten exception: "This doesn't apply to people we don't like." The long overdue reforms of the Civil-Rights Era said "No, this applies to everybody. Yes, even those people, or else, they mean, NOTHING!."

they mean, NOTHING!.

Indeed, a piece of paper written by dead white men. And I can only hope one day we all act in accordance with the truth.

The ideals of 1776 were, for a long time, treated as having an unwritten exception: "This doesn't apply to people we don't like."

No they weren't. I can link a random classic Star Trek scene as evidence for my argument if you'd like.

The long overdue reforms of the Civil-Rights Era said "No, this applies to everybody. Yes, even those people, or else, they mean, NOTHING!."

And yet we still have subjective rules around obscenity and speech that are selectively enforced against certain groups (and selectively prevented from being enforced against certain preferred groups) through something that could best be described as "manipulating procedural outcomes", to borrow a phrase. See the Shiloh Hendrix discussion elsewhere in this thread for an example.

No. The claim of the civil rights era was "No, this applies to everybody". The actual result is just that "people we don't like" changed.

Yeah, it's really worth spelling out how fucked up a lot of this is.

It took thirty years for Ames v. Ohio to overturn a 'background circumstance' rule that only applied to majority groups, and Ames still hasn't actually gotten her hearing on remand to see if it counts. United Steelworkers v. Weber and Johnson v. Transportation Agency just spell it out: discrimination one way is fine, still standing law post-Ames. SFFA theoretically meant a lot, and coincidentally schools are bending over backward to obfuscate their selection processes.

California is currently in the process of arguing that 34 USC 12601 just doesn't apply when the unconstitutional behavior is happening to people they don't like, they've already won once on the TRO, they're near-certain to win on the preliminary injunction, and they're definitely not going to be sanctioned for it (or for violating the duty of candor about the contents of one of their own expert witness declarations).

Even for stuff that should be uncontroversial, it's a mess. Oncale had Scalia defending hostile work environment law as applied to everyone, at least in the context of being sodomized with a bar of soap, and several circuit courts twisted it into a 'if you were perceived as gay' case. It's not the most unreasonable interpretation given Oncale's facts, but it's still very much not everybody -everbody.

You know, I would have been fine with "or else they mean nothing". I can see the end result of the fumbling of the bag by "the greatest generation, the silent generation and the boomers".

The exception may have been loadbearing. Time will tell.

Even under modern law, obscenity as a concept is screwed up. Mishkin is still standing law and has been used by appeals courts post-Miller, and it means obscenity can vary not just depending on the geographic location of the consumer, but sometimes even by the interests of the person creating or circulating it. If I were to forward around a bunch of vore to this forum, it can't be obscene; if I did so to a vore fetishist forum, it would be.

In practice, prosecutions are extremely limited and typically focused on a tiny band of very extreme content, typically by people with aggravating behavior (eg, animal abuse) or written or drawn underage content. But it's one of those big landmines.

I don't think MagicalKittycat's paraphrase is supported by the text of the opinion. The opinion actually refers to Dolly Parton four times:

As part of her artistic expression, Brigitte Bandit uses a prosthetic breastplate and various accessories like wigs, false eyelashes, high heels, corsets, jewelry, and clothing to perform drag and impersonate female stars like Dolly Parton. Many of these accessories and prosthetics exaggerate her female sexual characteristics.

Plaintiffs note for the Court by way of example just how broad the definition of "Nude" appears to be under S.B. 12. For example, swimmers or divers in the Olympics would run afoul of S.B. 12 if their swimsuits show even a minimal portion of their buttocks. Plaintiffs further contend that celebrity singers like Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, or Dolly Parton could be accused of being "nude" for wearing low-cut tops that show cleavage below the areola. Accordingly, based on the plain language of S.B. 12, the definition of "nude" potentially applies to performances that are not obscene or obscene for minors.

Because S.B. 12 does not specify who determines whether a performance "appeals to the prurient interest", or require that the work be taken as a whole, a single moment of eroticism could condemn an entire performance to criminal or civil penalties. Just as many people criticized Elvis's signature hip gyrations and were offended by his display of male sexuality, chastised Dolly Parton as a voluptuous sex symbol because of her big hair, flamboyant clothes and breast exposure, and shamed Miley Cyrus for "twerking" on stage during a live performance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, there are "erotic" elements in countless popular performances that could be subject to both civil and criminal penalties under S.B. 12.

S.B. 12 applies to countless protected performances that might contain elements that are "in some sense erotic" and meet either the law's definition of "nude" or "sexual conduct" but are not obscene or obscene for minors and are thus constitutionally protected. These examples, or any combination of them, could all potentially trigger liability under S.B. 12 while still being constitutionally protected performances. These examples are as follows.

…

(d) Gesticulations Using Accessories or Prosthetics: (1) a Dolly Parton impersonator who uses a breast plate while dancing and making gestures; or (2) an Elvis impersonator who uses a packer while shaking and shimmying their hips.

As an aside, why the hell is the court referring to this non-trans man by his stage name and female pronouns? This is a legal proceeding. He's not on stage, he should be referred to by his legal name.

The person submitted a request to proceed pseudonymously due to threats (1 2), the state did not oppose it, and the court granted it.

Judge Hittner should be ashamed. You don't get to litigate pseudonymously just because a few people said mean things online. And even if this was one of those rare cases where threats against the plaintiff were so severe as to justify filing under a pseudonym, the plaintiff should still be referred to as "he" and "John Doe" or by his initials. You don't get to just pick whatever stupid pun name you think is funniest. Especially when, as far as I'm aware, this plaintiff doesn't even claim to be a woman. He's a drag performer, not trans.

I don't think MagicalKittycat's paraphrase is supported by the text of the opinion.

This is par for the course with them.

Hittner also includes an answer for those who don't wish for them or their kids to see a drag show. Don't go

When it is the kindergarden that does it is probably hard to do so.

It’s also not the legal standard. We’ve long believed that obscenity is something that can be banned. We don’t need to ban obscenity for those who don’t want to see it; we ban because we believe it is deleterious to those who do want to view it.

we believe it is deleterious to those who do want to view it

We don't believe that at all lol

No, just the majority of the founders and persons inhabiting this nation pre-1990.

Then why have laws against obscenity?

Today being a victory for free speech, with Texas Senate Bill 12, the "drag show ban" being ruled unconstitutional by Reagan appointee judge David Hittner for the pretty obvious reason that it violated the first amendment.

It's not obvious that this actually violates the cut up 1st amendment as it stands. For example, a Texas federal jury put Thomas Allen Arthur in prison for 40 years merely for obscene speech. Obviously you can either jail people because they hurt your feelings or you can't. Americans have chosen the former option. There is no firm reason to draw the line at gay pedophile and not just gay.

See my response to Thomas Arthur here.

To the extent this is a response, I think it supports the argument in favor of drag show bans. They are obviously bad, like child obscenity is obviously bad. Arguments that they are artistic are ridiculous and not credible.

I would appreciate specific elaboration on what you think are the specific differences. And please avoid trying to provide lots of examples or lots of various theories. Just the strongest theory and the strongest example would do well for me.

A drag queen singer had been the mainstay of Eastern European pop music in early 2000s. I wouldn't call drag shows so obviously bad if millions of normie buckwheat-eating Slavs somehow missed it.

They are obviously bad, like child obscenity is obviously bad. Arguments that they are artistic are ridiculous and not credible.

Depictions of child murder and the machinery associated with those acts is an overwhelmingly popular, billion-dollar franchise.
Particularly among its target demographic: children.

(Christian author, too. He wrote it at what was going to be the end of his career in game development. Perhaps God has blessed him.)

The thing about the great debate about why violence in media is different from sex, etc. is that at its root, it's a claim that "obscenity" is just smuggling an isolated demand for rigor around sex. I wrote about the reasons why that happens yesterday, and the argument that you're probably going to make about "but if you normalize it, it'll inspire people to violate children/woman Bs" will be answered by:

  • gesturing at the rate of child murder and sex abuse (both over and under age) dropping over time
  • gesturing at the inverse correlation between the acts and the availability and quantity of media depicting said acts
  • gesturing at the fact that the only actor who ever demands censorship is woman A, and as we've established, this is entirely for self-serving reasons (deontological arguments about the sanctity of sex are covered by the "social conservative" section)
  • gesturing quizzically

So what, we just don't get to discuss the ways in which children actually act because it makes (You) butthurt about the fact it happens in the first place? Did you grow up unusually sheltered? Did you close your eyes and ears when your elementary school teacher told you not to look up sex.com on the computers, know a friend who changed someone's background to porn images, or fail to notice that list of "sites you'd better not go to in the computer lab" was just a list of where the good stuff was? Did you fail to notice how every 9 year old knows what a lesbian is? Were you not cut into the middle school plans to smuggle some booze in and fuck on the camping trip (or did you just ignore it when they got caught)? Did your parents not tell you they took up smoking in middle school? Have you ever shown her yours, and did she show you hers? Did your parents assume you were masturbating far before you even knew what that was?

I mean, obviously the answer to all those questions is no- far be it from me to accuse someone of tactically forgetting things just to win an argument, and I'm not sure which is worse, a bad memory or a boring life. (Perhaps a bad memory is an evolved response to the existential horror of a boring life.) But when I remember that all of those things did actually happen, I notice that if I wished to accurately write about characters of that age, I'm cut out of a significant portion of human experience and motivation.

Which is why the courts- at least, in countries and laws laid down in times where woman A's power was at its weakest... like the US in the '70s- are so concerned with narrowly defining "obscenity" in the first place. I'm sure you've watched Stranger Things (S1), and perhaps Adolescence (at least the first episode) as well, and noticed the scenes that features a child character pissing themselves. That's its own tag on PornHub (and others), so obviously it's obscene, on its face (or rather, in its pants or shorts; not all of us are that flexible)- it's sexual domination of the forced-to-piss.

But the case in Stranger Things is not obscene, and the argument (or perhaps "compromise" is a better word here) for why is that the sexual humiliation of that boy wasn't the ultimate goal of the work. By contrast, in Adolescence, the sexual humiliation of the boy is very obviously the ultimate purpose of the work, so it is obscene. (And of course you had government officials worldwide promoting it for that reason. But this is the Epstein class we're talking about, so Kier Starmer advocating this child porn be shown in schools ain't exactly a shocker.)

Not to say the authors aren't getting off on kids pissing themselves; the author of Made in Abyss is... uh, not exactly a closeted pedophile. (Though, you could argue those instances specifically- though not necessarily others- are less harmful, for there's not really an exploitative sexual dynamic between characters there... even though other scenes in the work are a lot more explicit. That's probably closer to how a kid would assess it, actually; the entire conceit of the show is, beyond exceptional visual quality, about how a kid in that situation would assess stuff. Which is why it can't exist without the other sexual parts or in any other form. Stephen King's It has a similar thing going on with its depiction of child sex, as I understand it.)

Yet the argument there is the presumption of mind-reading. Take that picture of that little Gook girl running away from her village, terrified, in a state of napalm-induced undress. Now, I get that not many people have fetishes for Uncle Sam's massive dick dropping hot sticky loads all over Asian girls, but I definitely believe someone has found sexual pleasure in that photo.

So is it "obscenity" or not? To what extent was it necessary to create that to prove the point, and to what degree even can you claim to judge that? It's clearly sexually charged and sexually exploitative (it's relevant that it's a little girl, and it's relevant that she's exposed that way)- if it was a decrepit old man the response would be very different. It threatens the power of women if it is not; it binds your ability to know what the cost of "the nation's best interests" are if it is.

So I assert the only feasible answer- from a law that binds society itself to protect it from its most selfish impulses- is "none of it is", as a basic anti-corruption/anti-oligopoly measure from an interest group that half the population will someday belong to.

Which is exactly the kind of thing 1A (and its weaker imitations worldwide) exists to guard against!

A very lengthy reply which doesn't really contain much substance. The simple response is that yes we have to make decisions about what is bad and what is not, and we should not be paralyzed about parades of alleged horribles laid out by sexual deviants in defense of their deviancy. The founders were not confused by this, people were not in 1920.

This is not Gimli threatening to chop of Eomer's head for not calling Galadriel the most beautiful, but relenting because Eomer prefers Arwen, and has this chosen the evening over the morning. No, you have chosen to flaunt some orcish beast and asked me to contemplate whether that monstrosity is perhaps as beautiful as Galadriel. We need not heed such spurious arguments.

(You) have chosen to flaunt some orcish beast woman A and asked me to contemplate whether that monstrosity is perhaps as beautiful as Galadriel woman B

My retort writes itself.

It is anticipated given your earlier post. The idea that all ideas are equal, one thing cannot be objectively more beautiful than another is just cultural relativism, which ends with unworkable nonsense. If you are pretending seeing a hairy man's ass in a dress with a red thong is as good as seeing Ursula Andress ascend from the water of the Bahamas, your judgment is clearly so impaired that you can't be trusted to make calls on more important matters, such as criminal law. You are not only very likely to adopt the mindset of bicycle meme guy, you are prone to universalize this dysfunctional form of thought and decriminalize bike theft in its entirety. In fact, you are probably going to be seriously contemplating eliminating private property in its entirety.

They are obviously bad, like child obscenity is obviously bad. Arguments that they are artistic are ridiculous and not credible.

You are sneakily building consensus here, as not everyone believes they are "obviously" bad, and claiming that those who actually do believe they are artistic are broken in some fundamental way that allows their opinions to be ignored.

That is how you make moral judgements and laws, yes.

I can't imagine the law was written to fail. It seems more likely to me that the legislature tried to cast a wide net in its phrasing to ensure that not a single show escapes its reach. Drag is a malleable medium and it has a substantial grassroots presence. If the law was too specific, it is not unthinkable that motivated drag performers would tweak their shows in such a way to evade the ban, all the while they wink and nod to their knowing audience.

Hittner also includes an answer for those who don't wish for them or their kids to see a drag show. Don't go.

They do them at public schools now. But, ha ha, perhaps not in Texas.

No, in Texas they have them at shops/restaurants in the gay/counterculture districts. The activists who protest them are protected by police and periodically these restaurants get a bill for backtaxes on hosting a sexually oriented performance without registering as a strip club(this stunt is probably the right way to react to this stuff and it got Glenn Hegar, the state's top tax collector at the time, an appointment to the chancellorship of Texas A&M).

S.B. 12 applies to countless protected performances that might contain elements that are "in some sense erotic" and meet either the law's definition of "nude" or "sexual conduct" but are not obscene or obscene for minors and are thus constitutionally protected. These examples, or any combination of them, could all potentially trigger liability under S.B. 12 while still being constitutionally protected performances. These examples are as follows.

  • (a) Nudity: (1) A gymnast performing a floor routine wearing a leotard or other garment that rides up and reveals a small part of her buttocks; (2) a vocalist wearing a low-cut dress that reveals a small part of the breast; or (3) a ballet dancer who experiences a wardrobe malfunction and reveals a portion of her buttocks or breasts;

  • (b) Sex Acts: (1) a comedian who uses gestures to suggest sexual acts; or (2) a theater group performing a musical with a simulated sex scene on stage;

  • (c) Genitals in a Lewd State: (1) a drag king who uses a crotch packer to simulate having a penis; (2) an art exhibition with abstract paintings that look like female genitals; or (3) a comedian using a dildo as a prop in a comedic routine;

  • (d) Gesticulations Using Accessories or Prosthetics: (1) a Dolly Parton impersonator who uses a breast plate while dancing and making gestures; or (2) an Elvis impersonator who uses a packer while shaking and shimmying his hips.

Much like the "possible applications" that the Fifth Circuit found "unquantifiable" in Merriott, these are just a handful of traditionally constitutionally protected performances that S.B. 12 would prohibit. This Court need not list additional hypotheticals to which S.B. 12 would apply because "the potential applications are limitless".

  • Text of law (along with the House Research Organization analysis mentioned above; it does not mention cheerleading, concerts, or theatrical performances, but the judge's opinion does)

I dont see why any of these examples are in need of 1st Amendment protection. The only one of the examples listed that strikes me as a close call is (a) (1) which basically pertains to sports attire, wherein the judge makes his own inference that occasionally the most optimal uniform for performance in a sport (only talking about females in the example, but male examples exist) may spark the prurient interest in some.

To which there is a simple rebuttal that the Olympics were carried out in the nude quite often and this judge is merely a pervert in need of retirement.

(2) a vocalist wearing a low-cut dress

Sure, when a female vocalist does it, it's constitutionally protected, but when I do it I'm not allowed back in the seminary.

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