Been There Done That!

For those who do not believe that history repeats itself. Gay bars being closed down: Now ot Then?

Stopping gay teachers form grooming the students: Now or Then?

US drag bans are nothing new – states were outlawing ‘cross-dressing’ in the 1800s

Drag bans are not new. From the mid-19th century, dozens of US “masquerade laws” were used to target cross-dressing or dressing as another gender more broadly.

The Pink News

By Maggie Baska

April 16, 20232023 has seen multiple US states seek to outlaw drag performances, with Tennessee becoming the first to pass legislation which was quickly blocked by a federal judge. 

Despite the headlines, the Tennessee law wouldn’t technically be the first of its kind, because rules criminalising drag and gender non-conformity have been around in the US for at least a century.

From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, dozens of areas in the US enacted legislation prohibiting appearing in public in “disguise” or “masquerade”, collectively referred to as masquerade laws. 

Even when these laws didn’t explicitly crack down on gender expression, they were interpreted as applying to cross-dressing or dressing as another gender more broadly as a criminal form of concealment.

And it goes back even further than the Twentieth Century.

In 1848, a law in Columbus, Ohio forbade a person from appearing in public “in dress not belonging to his or her sex”, and Chicago, Illinois, passed a similar measure three years later. 

And let us not forget that one of our past presidents John Quincy Adams defended a trans person, in the case of Gray vs. Pitts. Assault and Battery.

Countless people were arrested under masquerade laws, including feminists, drag entertainers, cisgender people who liked to wear clothing traditionally assigned to another gender, and trans people expressing their gender. 

[…]

Masquerade laws were used for decades to imperil, harass and silence LGBTQ+ people. Anyone arrested could have their name published in the newspaper in addition to having a criminal record, potentially ruining their futures. 

Hmm… does it sound like today? The new laws today are meant to “imperil, harass and silence LGBTQ+ people.”

Don’t forget the excuse that the raid at the Stonewall was to check for “drag queens.” Sylvia Rivera characterized the Stonewall Inn uprising as,

What people fail to realize is that the Stonewall was not a drag queen bar. It was a white male bar for middle-class males to pick up young boys of different races. Very few drag queens were allowed in there, because if they had allowed drag queens into the club, it would have brought the club down. That would have brought more problems to the club. It’s the way the Mafia thought, and so did the patrons. So the queens who were allowed in basically had inside connections. I used to go there to pick up drugs to take somewhere else. I had connections.

That was back in ‘69 and then a new decade brought more trouble for us with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s (R Wisconsin) Lavender Scary… “Are now or ever have been a homosexual?”

Then we had Anita Bryant came in to lead the persecution of us in the 1970s with “Save Our Children” campaign and many Republican states changed their consitution and/or passed anti-gay laws.

How 1970s Christian crusader Anita Bryant helped spawn Florida's LGBTQ culture war

Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by critics, is part of a long legacy of anti-gay rhetoric and legislation in the state.

NBC News

By Jillian Eugenios

April 13, 2022

At a public hearing in Dade County, Florida, parents were enraged. The nation, they said, was in peril and children were at risk. A recent ordinance had granted gay people housing and employment protections, and that meant teachers couldn’t be fired because of their sexuality. Florida classrooms quickly became a battleground, and opponents of the ordinance said the state’s support of civil rights for homosexuals was infringing on their rights as parents. 

Action had to be taken, and a campaign to limit the legal rights of LGBTQ people — all in the name of protecting children — was enacted. A woman who spoke at this hearing said it was her right to control “the moral atmosphere in which my children grow up.” That woman was Anita Bryant, formerly Miss Oklahoma and a white, telegenic, Top 40 singer who was well known for her Florida orange juice commercials (“A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine!” she’d say). Bryant spearheaded an anti-LGBTQ campaign of such impact that its echoes can be heard in today’s rhetoric. The year was 1977.

Last month, nearly half a century after Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its opponents. The measure, which takes effect July 1, prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in “kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” Similar bills are being considered in 19 other states, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank that has been tracking the bills.

[…]

“In the present environment, you can’t go after homosexual teachers anymore,” Faderman said. “We have too many allies. And so Florida has found another way to do it by this ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, which doesn’t go after homosexual teachers precisely. But the idea is the same. That is, that homosexuality is a pariah status, and it shouldn’t be discussed in the public schools.” 

What goes around comes around. The Lavender Scare was brought to you by Republicans. The “Save Our Children” campaign was brought to you by the Republicans, and now it is brought to you by the Republicans. I think that I see a trend here.

We licked it once and we can do it again, however it does damage in its return.