Why Tennessee's law is more dangerous than anything I ever faced as a drag queen | Opinion

Way back in 1971 at start of my drag career at the Watch Your Hat and Coat Saloon in Nashville, we had to enter and leave the club on Second Avenue with our drag concealed in a garbage bag. We were equally careful to enter the club for work as men in our street clothes and to scrub our faces free of make-up before leaving each night.

Otherwise, you could encounter a redneck looking for an excuse to beat up a gay man in a dress.

Now, over 50 years later, reading the news coverage of the drag ban in my home state of Tennessee, I feel sick to my stomach. The hate-filled bullies are no longer lurking in the alley waiting to beat us up. In 2023, they work at the state Capitol. They reside in the governor’s mansion.

Tennessee’s new law is far more dangerous than anything we ever faced back in the 1970s. And I say that as a drag queen who was on stage in 1973 when someone intentionally set fire to the Watch Your Hat and Coat and burned that packed club to the ground.

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Things are going backwards

Under this newly passed Tennessee law, drag performers could face six months in jail on a misdemeanor charge for a first offense. The second time, it’s a felony punishable by up to six years in prison. So, if you ride on a float in a pride parade or read a storybook to children in a public library, you’re risking arrest and jail  — for entertaining people.

(On March 31, hours before the new law was set to begin, a federal judge temporarily halted the ban, citing concerns about the constitutionality of the new law).

In contrast, aside from requiring all performers to get an entertainer license from the City of Nashville and making us put a Mr. in front of our stage names so our audiences knew we were men in dresses, the cops didn’t really mess with us back in the 1970s. In fact, they used to sit in the audience. The mayor of Nashville Beverly Briley would bring guests to our shows.

Now at age 73, as someone who has performed in drag all over the world, it tears me up to see things slide backwards.

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Consider the real threats

As the grandson of a Tennessee Missionary Baptist preacher, I would ask the legislators passing these hate-filled laws in my home state to consider the following:

In March, a Memphis youth pastor was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for exploiting children.

In Chattanooga, a youth pastor and former PTA president has been charged with three counts of child molestation.

Meanwhile, a youth pastor in Knoxville was arrested for sexual battery and is now listed on the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry.

And in Nashville, a person with a small arsenal of weapons shot their way into a Christian school and killed three 9-year-olds sitting in their classrooms.

Drag queens are the least of your problems.

Charlie Brown has been performing as a female impersonator for over half a century. He currently performs each weekend at the Atlanta Eagle and Lips Atlanta. In 2022, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens presented Brown with the City of Atlanta Phoenix Award, the city’s highest honor. He resides in Atlanta with his husband Fred Wise. With Atlanta journalist Richard Eldredge, Brown is currently finishing a memoir chronicling his life on and off stage.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Drag queen: Tennessee law is more dangerous than anything I've seen