I Remember When Republicans In Congress Waved Their Copies Of The Constitution.

They were protesting something that the Democrats did and said that unlike the Democrats the Republicans followed the Constitution… but they seem to ignore the First Amendment when it doesn’t suit them.

Bills Introduced in Tenn. to Ban Drag Shows, Gender-Affirming Care
Just one day after voters rejected the conservative conspiracy theory about LGBTQ+ people, lawmakers in Tennessee doubled down with not one but two restrictive bills.
The Advocate
By Christopher Wiggins
November 9, 2022<


One day after the 2022 midterm elections proved that Republicans' efforts to paint LGBTQ+ people as groomers and dangerous to children failed, Tennessee lawmakers doubled down on their anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment by introducing two bills targeting the community.

State lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 1 and Senate Bill 3 on Wednesday. SB 1 would prohibit doctors and families from making necessary lifesaving health care decisions to support transgender youth. Meanwhile, SB 3 would make performing drag in public where children can see it a crime.

Tennessee Majority Leaders William Lamberth and Jack Johnson introduced HB and SB 1, called the Protecting Children From Gender Mutilation Act.

[…]

Under SB 3's broad language, it is illegal for an adult cabaret performer to perform on public property or in a place where minors can witness it. It includes topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, and male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that "appeals to prurient (sexual) interests" during adult cabaret performances.

First offenses would be treated as Class A misdemeanors and second offenses as Class E felonies, according to the bill.

Grr… For a party that calls itself the Constitution party they snub our primary rights of “free speech” that is guaranteed in the First Amendment!

The Supreme Court had many rulings on adult entertainment including the famous case where Justice Potter Stewart said: “I know it when I see it.”

Middle Tennessee State University webpage said…

Obscenity and Pornography

[…]

The Miller test is now the leading test for obscenity cases

In the 1970s, the Burger Court determined that the obscenity standard was too rigid for prosecutors. Therefore, in Miller v. California (1973) the Court adopted a new three-part test — what Chief Justice Warren E. Burger called “guidelines” for jurors — that was more favorable to the prosecution:

(1) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

(2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law;

and (3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

In Miller, the Court reasoned that individuals could not be convicted of obscenity charges unless the materials depict “patently offensive hard core sexual conduct.” Under that reasoning, many sexually explicit materials — pornographic magazines, books, and movies — are not legally obscene. Ironically, Justice Brennan dissented in Miller and Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton (1973), changing his position on obscenity. He determined that obscenity laws were too vague and could not be applied without “jeopardizing fundamental First Amendment values.”

What the Republicans are counting on is ignorance!

They are counting on the fact that the general public has no idea of what a “drag show” is and because of the news media coverage of Pride Parade of drag queens they think that it is something perverted and obscene sex acts.

Even when raunchy nudity is on stage the Supreme Court has said you cannot ban it…

CAN A CITY COMPLETELY PROHIBIT ADULT-ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESSES FROM OPERATING?

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But a city may not completely prohibit adult entertainment. In its 1981 decision Schad v. Borough of Mount Ephraim, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a town in New Jersey could not ban live adult performance dancing within its borders. “By excluding live entertainment throughout the Borough, the Mount Ephraim ordinance prohibits a wide range of expression that has long been held to be within the protections of the First and Fourteenth Amendments,” the high court wrote.

And there are many other court rulings that prohibit the banning of entertainment which the Republicans in their grandstanding to appease the evangelical right-wing base conveniently disregard.