6 April 6–12, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents If elected, she said she would want to fo- cus on making sure code compliance offi- cers and police are handling concerns of residents. “Right now, what I’m checking is they are not filing a proper report. They don’t even show up sometimes, most of the times,” she said. She also would want to focus on helping residents understand their rights and how to report problems in their neighborhood to be handled by city staff or police. Besides what he’s read in local news re- ports, Moreno said he doesn’t know much about his opponent. But he’s heard concerns from residents that are similar to hers. They tell him, for example, that their 311 reports aren’t being addressed, despite filing the multiple times. He said he understands residents’ frus- tration when 311 requests seem to go unan- swered. He said sometimes if there are multiple 311 requests about the same thing, they’ll get bounced back or closed. With nearly 95,000 residents in his dis- trict and only a handful of people on staff in his office, Moreno said, “it is a difficult job to try to ensure that we are getting to every- one’s priorities in a timely manner.” If reelected, he hopes to continue work- ing with city staff to develop better systems to address resident concerns. “I come from a family that’s called Dallas home for generations,” he said. “Dallas is home to me, and I will fight tooth and nail to ensure that our district is at the front end and to ensure that our district does not get left out.” May 6 is election day in the Dallas City Council race. Residents have until April 6 to register to vote, and early voting begins on April 24. ▼ OPINION DRAGGING US DOWN IF ONLY TEXAS LAWMAKERS LOVED THE CONSTITUTION MORE THAN THEY HATE DRAG. BY PATRICK WILLIAMS P lease take a gander at the photos of Milton Berle and Flip Wilson on this page. We have some questions for you. Do these images appeal to your prurient interest? By that we mean, does Uncle Miltie in a coconut halter or Flip Wilson dressed as his character Geraldine inflame your shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex or excretion? Do the photos lack all serious lit- erary, artistic, political or scientific value? Does the appearance of two giants of Ameri- can comedy in dresses violate the standards of decency in your community? Are the photos obscene? If you answered yes to all of the above, then congratulations. You have what it takes to be a conservative, drag-hatin’ member of the Texas Legislature, provided you’re will- ing to ignore the part of the legislators’ oath of office about preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution. Right now, four bills containing similar language concerning drag performances are before the Legislature. Among a host of bills aimed at erasing gay and trans people from public life, these four would declare that any club, restaurant, venue or other commercial enterprise that hosts live drag performances seen by at least two people is a sexually ori- ented business, subject to the added fees and a host of other restrictions that apply to strip clubs, adult bookstores and the like. The bills would add this definition to the sort of enter- tainment that makes a business sexually ori- ented: “A ‘Drag performance’ means a performance in which a performer exhibits a gender identity that is different than the per- former’s gender assigned at birth using cloth- ing, makeup, or other physical markers and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise per- forms before an audience for entertainment.” That’s it. A man in a dress or a woman dressed as a man reading Bible verses to an audience is speech that could arguably fall under the state’s SOB law. That raises all sorts of absurd questions. Would a bookstore that hosts G-rated drag story times for children be labeled a sexually oriented business? How about a movie the- ater that has a special screening of The Rocky Horror Picture show hosted by someone im- personating the undeniably sexy and trans Dr. Frank-N-Furter? Will agents from the Texas Comptroller’s Office show up de- manding the fee of $5 per audience member that SOBs must pay? The bigger question: How could such a law be constitutional in a country that still has a First Amendment? We put that ques- tion to a couple of lawyers, one with the free-speech advocacy group the Freedom Forum and another with the Texas office of the American Civil Liberties Union. The short answer, according to them: It can’t. “This is just not content-based,” said Kevin Goldberg, a First Amendment special- ist with the Freedom Forum. “It seems likely to be viewpoint-based, which is even worse than being content-based in terms of violat- ing the First Amendment. What it does is it takes drag shows, and only drag shows, and makes them lewd, considers them lewd for the purposes of this law.” Public lewdness, obscenity’s cousin, is prohibited under Texas law, but its defini- tion involves partial or full nudity and overt sexual acts — in other words, how much clothing is removed, not which clothes the performers are wearing. Courts trying to suss out what constitutes obscenity — the kind of speech that can be regulated — apply the Supreme Court’s “Miller test,” Goldberg said. It asks whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, when taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct spe- cifically defined by the applicable state law; and whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or sci- entific value. Laws that restrict speech rights must be narrowly tailored to meet a compelling government interest. “If Dallas or any other government entity wanted to ban drag, just outright ban drag, it could not do it, because the only way you could ... regulate such speech is if it is actu- ally obscene under what we call the Miller test,” Goldberg said. “But this doesn’t even come close. Very little is considered obscene under the Miller test.” Brian Klosterboer, a staff attorney with the Texas branch of the American Civil Lib- erties Union, said the bills are “like a model in a law school class on how to violate the First Amendment.” “There’s nothing inherently sexual or ob- scene about drag,” Klosterboer said. “… There’s drag that’s completely appropriate for all ages. … Like any form of artistic ex- pression, it’s protected by the First Amend- ment. … You can’t ban the entire medium.” The good news, for those who cherish free speech, is that even if any of the bills do pass, they’re unlikely to withstand a court chal- lenge. And Klosterboer holds out hope that they might not even pass. “I would hope they’re so egregiously unconstitutional the lawmakers won’t pass them into law,” he said. Maybe they won’t, but that doesn’t mean the bills’ existence isn’t harmful. Forget about the questions concerning the consti- tution and free speech (the bills’ authors have). These bills are about fomenting ha- tred against LGBTQ people, and that’s a booming field in Texas these days. In De- cember, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation issued a report that found 141 instances of threats, protests and violent ac- tion against drag events nationwide. Texas led the states with 20 “anti-drag attacks.” No. 2 Virginia had 10. “It’s a really scary time right now for LG- BTQIA people in Texas,” Klosterboer said. “...There’s no limit to how far they’ll go to [erase] LGBTQIA people from public life.” Dallas drag performer Daphne Rio has seen the chilling effect that conservative lawmakers’ animus toward drag shows and the gay community in general is having right now. “Any time there is a law being proposed or even rhetoric being spewed against our community … it sends a message to them that these people aren’t valued,” Rio said. Rio has friends who have had to change phone numbers and delete social media ac- counts because of threats of violence and harassment from anti-drag protesters. The opponents routinely and falsely accuse drag artists of “grooming” children, applying lan- guage used to describe pedophiles to per- formers who simply perform dressed as women. Certainly, there are adult drag shows that are risqué, but kids can see more flesh and hear raunchier words at concerts by mainstream performers. Drag perform- ers and the venues that host them know their audiences and know better than to cross lines when children are in the crowd, Rio said, and the venues take care to let audi- ence members know if a show contains adult humor or content. “We’re all adults. I don’t know of anyone in my community that I perform with who would do something lewd around children,” Rio said. “We would never want to be lewd or disgusting around children.” At all-ages shows, Rio said, venue staff will come to the dressing room to give per- formers a heads-up if children are in the au- dience. Regardless of reality, anti-drag protests, with their threats of violence and vicious “grooming” rhetoric, continue to have a chilling effect. On Rotation Brewery and Kitchen on Lemmon Avenue canceled a re- cent drag show after receiving threats and fake, negative Yelp reviews from oppo- nents. Also last week, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free- speech advocacy group, sued West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler over his decision to cancel a charity drag show intended to raise money for an orga- nization that seeks to prevent suicide among LGBTQ+ youth. Wendler acknowl- edged that “the law of the land appears to require” that the show be allowed to go on, but he canceled it anyway. And that’s the truly awful part about this sham legislation and Wendler’s disregard for the law. Texas lawmakers and a univer- sity president, who should know better, are making a choice, picking mob rule above the rule of law. Whatever your opinions of drag shows — and last we checked, no Texan is required to attend one — you should find that chilling. ▼ ABORTION RIGHTS THE RIGHT TO FUND WHY NORTH TEXAS ABORTION RIGHTS ADVOCATES ARE ‘VERY HAPPY.’ BY SIMONE CARTER I n 2021, the conservative-controlled Texas Legislature imposed a sweeping abortion ban. The following summer, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a decades-old precedent laid out by Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that established abortion as a constitutional right. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images and NBC How do you feel about these photos of Milton Berle and Flip Wilson? The answer should have no bearing on legislation. >> p8 Unfair Park from p4
