(LifeSiteNews) — Texas A&M University System must allow the “Queer Empowerment Council” (QEC) to hold its student-run “Draggieland” drag show on campus Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal ruled on March 24.
Last month, the system’s Board of Regents unanimously adopted a ban on holding drag shows at any of its schools’ special event venues, calling such shows “inconsistent with the system’s mission and core values of its universities, including the value of respect for others.” The libertarian group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) quickly filed a lawsuit on behalf of QEC, declaring drag “protected expression” under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Board said that Rudder Theatre, where Draggieland was to be held, was a “limited public forum” rather than a “designated public forum,” giving the university greater discretion over how it could be used.
But Rosenthal rejected that argument, The College Fix reports, finding that “both the performance and monologues that comprise Draggieland are intended to convey a culturally significant message about [so-called] LGBTQ+ rights” and therefore constitute protected speech and expression and that the ban was “quintessential” viewpoint discrimination, “which creates the presumption that the ban is unconstitutional regardless of the type of forum.”
The issue reflects an ongoing debate between maintaining public venues as open, viewpoint-neutral forums for differing views and at what point the taxpayers who support those venues have a right to refuse to support certain types of content to which they object.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott made his side known by responding to the ruling, “Texas universities have every right to dictate what events are held on their campuses. Drag shows promote radical gender ideology. They are not welcome at Texas universities. Our universities must educate our students—NOT indoctrinate them.”
Drag in particular has emerged as one of LGBT activists’ favored tools for exposing and acclimating children to the concepts of “gender fluidity” and sexual experimentation, via so-called “family-friendly” drag shows at schools and community events or “drag queen story hour” (DQSH) events in which crossdressers read books to children, often at public libraries.
DQSH organizers admit that the concept is intended to give children “unabashedly queer role models,” teach children to “defy rigid gender restrictions,” and mold them into “bright lights of change in their communities.”
