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16 hours ago

“JUST DON’T GO.” That was the advice from an 87-year-old federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan as he struck down Texas’ drag law this week.

Judge David Hittner ruled that Senate Bill 12, passed in 2023 to restrict drag performances, was so broad and vague that it clearly violated the First Amendment.

The law allowed businesses to be fined up to $10,000 and performers to face as much as a year in jail, but the language Texas used, according to the ruling, could reach far beyond drag. Hittner pointed to cheerleading, dancing and live theater as examples.

He also pointed to Dolly Parton.

Hittner cited the way Dolly had been criticized as a “voluptuous sex symbol” because of her big hair, flamboyant clothes and cleavage. The same language Texas used to decide whether a drag performance was too sexual or “prurient” could just as easily apply to a mainstream performer—and to Dolly who had spent more than half a century doing exactly what the law wanted to regulate.

The ruling against Texas was issued the same day Dolly Parton died.

Brigitte Bandit, an Austin based drag performer and one of the plaintiffs who challenged the law, had testified against it at the Texas Capitol in 2023 while carrying a children’s book about Dolly Parton.

A photo from Bandit’s testimony from court eventually reached Dolly, who later sent Bandit a rhinestone-covered guitar inscribed, “To Brigitte. Love, Dolly Parton.”

Bandit performs as Dolly, and this Saturday she’ll do it again at an Austin bar in a tribute to her—and to the lawsuit, carrying the rhinestone guitar Dolly gave her.

It’s a remarkable collision of events. Dolly spent her career exaggerating femininity so completely that she turned big hair, rhinestones, cleavage and a larger-than-life persona into something unmistakably her own. And now, Texas law written to police those same kinds of expressions became broad enough that a federal judge could use Dolly to demonstrate a constitutional problem.

It was a loss for identity politics and a win for free speech.

In the ruling, Hittner had a simpler answer for anyone who finds drag offensive. They don’t need the government to ban it.

“Just don’t go.” ... See MoreSee Less

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2 days ago

So, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?

In 1992, Iowa voters were considering a constitutional amendment prohibiting discrimination based on sex.

Pat Robertson—the televangelist behind The 700 Club, former Republican presidential candidate and founder of the Christian Coalition—wanted the amendment defeated.

His organization sent out a fundraising letter warning that the “feminist agenda” encouraged women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.

Yes. All of that because Iowa was considering equal rights for women.

Robertson meant it as a warning about what feminism would do to marriage, Christianity and the traditional family.

Instead, feminists reclaimed the quote. The shortened version—“leave their husbands, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians”—ended up on shirts, posters and merch.

Women turned it into a slogan.

The campaign worked—at least temporarily. Iowa voters rejected the amendment 52% to 48% in 1992. Six years later, voters approved an equal-rights amendment by an overwhelming margin (84%), adding protections against discrimination based on sex to the Iowa Constitution. ... See MoreSee Less

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