Kentucky Republicans file bills to protect kids from ‘sexually explicit’ performances

Legislation to regulate “adult-oriented businesses” and “sexually explicit” performances in public spaces — definitions that include drag shows, according to the bills’ language — were filed by Republicans Tuesday in the Kentucky House and Senate.

House Bill 402 and Senate Bill 147, filed by Rep. Nancy Tate, R-Brandenburg, and Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, would establish statewide policy restricting where such performances can take place with the goal of keeping them away from kids and teenagers.

The objective, Tate said at a news conference announcing the joint bills, is “preserving the innocence of our children.”

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“Children should be given the opportunity to develop without thinking about sex and sexual preferences,” she said. “It is our responsibility as adults to protect the innocence of their minds and bodies.”

The intent is not “intended to impede on any First Amendment rights of free speech, nor to impost limitations or reasonable access” to adults who may want to attend a drag show, Tichenor said.

But so far, judges have found bills of this nature unconstitutional, including in Tennessee, which became the first state last year to ban public drag shows. In June, that law was deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge, who called it overly broad and a violation of the First Amendment. Similarly in Texas, a federal judge concluded the state’s restrictions on drag performances were unconstitutional because the law “impermissibly infringes on the First Amendment and chills free speech.”

The intention behind the legislation in Kentucky is not to infringe on free speech, Tichenor said Tuesday. Rather, it’s aimed at preventing “the deleterious secondary effects” such performances may have on minors, according to the bill language.

Though they did not cite specifics for how drag shows contribute to these adverse outcomes, the bill nonetheless outlines the following secondary effects as being “associated” with adult-oriented performances: crime and human trafficking, “potential spread of disease, lewdness, public indecency, vulgarity, weakening of public morality, obscenity, illicit drug use and drug trafficking,” as well as “negative impacts on surrounding properties and their value, urban blight, litter, and sexual assault and exploitation.”

“Drag performances” as defined in the bills is a performance in which someone “sings, lip syncs, dances, reads . . . before an audience for entertainment while exhibiting an exaggerated gender expression that is inconsistent with the biological sex of the performer . . . and this expression is a caricatured, advertised or featured aspect of the performance taken as a whole.”

The bill’s definition of what’s considered “harmful to minors” is when content “taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest of minors,” or is “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole,” and “lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors.”

The bill defines “adult-oriented businesses” as adult arcades, adult bookstore or video stores, adult theater and adult cabaret, which it describes as a commercial establishment that features a naked person, a live performance featuring nudity or sexual conduct, or a movie that depicts sexual conduct or nudity.

Content considered sexually explicit under these bills includes “showing of actual or simulated human male or female genitals, pubic area, or buttocks with less than a fully opaque covering,” or the showing of an “actual or simulated adult or adolescent female breast with less than a fully opaque covering of any portion below the top of the areola.”

Such content could not be screened or performed within roughly 1,000 feet of any “educational occupancy” building, which includes schools, churches, libraries, child care centers, parks, recreational facilities, seminaries and universities.

The pair of proposals are a repackaged, somewhat diluted version of Senate Bill 115 from last session, which Tichenor also filed. It would’ve prohibited “adult-oriented businesses” — including drag shows — from operating within 1,000 feet of child care facilities, schools, public parks, homes or places of worship.

Though ultimately left on the cutting room floor by the Republican-controlled General Assembly, Tichenor’s bill sought to block “adult performances,” which included drag shows, from taking place on publicly-owned property, or “in a location where the person knows or should know the adult performance could be viewed” by a child.

That standard is in the new version of the bills this session, capping that distance at 933 feet, or the average length of a city block, Tichenor said. Businesses that host such performances currently would have a five-year grace period to relocate.

The new version of the bill would include civil penalties only for business owners who host such performances (loss of liquor or business license, for instance). Last year’s proposal additionally threatened performers with misdemeanor charges and possible felony after repeat violations.

Tichenor made it a point to clarify, both last year with her original attempt to restrict drag performances and on Tuesday, that her bill is not an attempt to outlaw all drag or cross-gender performances, where a man dresses up as a woman or vice versa.

“Again, this is not to limit drag. It’s not to limit access to adult content. It’s strictly to keep children” away from those performances, she said.

Ban Conversion Therapy Kentucky decried the bills for conflating drag shows with sexually explicit performances.

“Drag is a political protest against both historical and modern gender roles — a marginalized people’s cry for freedom, a proud celebration of strength in the face of oppression,” Executive Director Rebecca Blankenship and Government Affairs Director Michael Frazier said in a statement.

“All Kentuckians, especially our pro-LGBT organizations, want to protect the innocence of all Kentucky children,” they said. “This bill does not achieve that. Instead, it is an unconstitutional effort to suppress political speech. It can only waste our legislature’s time and our taxpayer dollars.”

Though neither Tichenor nor Tate cited specifics, they referred generally to drag show story hours in libraries as a reason that necessitated their bills.

Tichenor generally referred to strife over drag shows in Daviess County as a motivation for her bill. After hosting adult-only drag shows for more than a year, Owensboro’s RiverPark Center and its adjacent Ghostlight Lounge, drew the ire of some residents in 2022 who created a petition in asking for those shows to be canceled.

Though they only permitted people over the age of 21, the venue was within 1,000 feet of two locations where children could potentially gather.

The Daviess County Citizens for Decency group that opposed drag shows also protested the Daviess County Public Library’s celebration of Pride Month, according to the Owensboro Times.