You're listening to Comedy Central. Wow, Wow, blow, no idea, this is so this is so lovely. I didn't know the audience was going to go so crazy. I didn't know what would happen after Lindsey Graham. Before we get into these anti drag bills that are popping up around the country, I think there are a lot of people, uh objecting to drag without even having any idea what it is. And I know I've never I've ever gone
to a drag show. And can you explain, Drett? Absolutely, Yeah, Well, somebody just was shocked that you've never been to a drag show. You I'm embarrassed. No, no, no, it's not shocking that you've never been to a show that you would think of as a drag show. But you've probably seen Missus Doubt Fire or Tutsie or any of those, you know things that we have. I didn't realize they were in drag. Well that's some very convincing costuming, you know.
So drag is something that's been part of the culture for a very long time in a lot of different ways, and so there's many types of it that we've sort of been accepting in contemporary culture, like those examples, but you know, it's something that hearkens back to. We see it in Shakespeare, we see it in kabuki theater, across cultures. It's something that has just been a neat and unquestioned
for a long time. But within American history, I mean, drag is something that has uplifted and protected and fought for the queer community. Pre stone Wall, I mean, pre pre Stonewall era, queer people had to congregate in clubs and bars. That was the one place that they could sort of find community and find togetherness and feel safe even though there were constantly police raids on those places.
And drag queens, transwomen were the entertainers, were the matriarchs, were the people who fostered this community and went Stonewall, which was the alleged beginning of the gay rights movement when it rolled around, they were the folks who really started the riot. Yeah, on drag race, you sing, you work the runway, you create and perform your own variety show. It's just all the things that I do except them on way and the singing, Well, you're in good company
with drag queens not being especially good singers. So that's and you and I can work on your runway. So thank you, thank you, and you you direct and you write and produce a seventy minute show. Drag shows right, different ones, right, Yeah, what are those shows about? Yeah? So I do a lot of different stuff that's more in the theatrical realm. So some of them are evening length plays as you would more traditionally know. Some of them are cabarets with through lines. And that's another thing
about drag is that it's so many things. A lot of people think of it as what we know it as from reality TV right now, which is largely lip syncing and big dance movements, which is really exciting, but there's also a full history of of theater and a lot of other disciplines. So my shows are shows that are essentially a love letter to the queer community, to folks who need to feel a sense of hope and
sense of generosity. Specifically, I do a holiday show with my good friend jinc' monsoon, right, and we've been touring that for this will be our sixth year. I'm not announcing it, but it's our sixth year coming up, and that show is very much rooted in the idea of that Christmas show. It's a Christmas show, yes, so we
do it every November and December. And that came about because of just really seeing the need among queer young people and queer adults to feel a sense of family and homecoming at a time of year where can have a lot of messaging that we don't feel included in.
There's many people who have strained relationships with their families, and so this show is a message of and you know, and it's body and it's funny and there's big, sparkly dances, but it's got its heart about about coming together and making people realize that that your future can be whatever you want it to be. Your traditions can be what they want what you want them to be, and you can be who you want to be. Well yeah, okay, thinking about being who you want to be. Ablet's talk
about Tennessee. It's the first I've stayed, i think to explicitly ban it's first place that it passed. Yes yeah, yeah, and uh in public places where miners are or something like that. Once you're um, but now it's happening all over the place, right, Um, this is some new thing they've invented. I'm sure that most of the Republicans who are they find stuff every once in a while to go after or they and I bet you most of them don't know what this is about at all. Have
any idea. There's things I don't you know, I don't actually I've never gone in Nascar. I don't know. I know what it's about. There's a lot of stuff I don't go to. So, but what is this about? What is their thing about? Yeah, I mean, what is this about? Is kind of the biggest question because it's all so vague.
These bills are terrifying because the language is so open ended, and they are and a lot of enduring also exactly right that a lot of these people don't really understand what drag shows are and they don't have to because this is all sort of coded language for an attack
on the LGBTQIA plus community. And the wording of this bill talks about drag as adult entertainment, which is insidious within itself to say that someone dressing this way is only appropriate for adults when they're not doing anything that's adult oriented. And it also talks about them not being able to do it within range where a minor could see, right, which means no pride parades, no outdoor pride events, but it also means things like what if the window is
viewable from the sidewalk in a drag bar. I mean, it's all so subjective and it's also open to interpretation that they can really kind of go wherever they want with it. Not to mention the fact that the bill defines this as this adult entertainment or adult cabaret, as men or women dressing as the doing male or female impersonation, and that within itself is also something that who is interpreting this bill? Lee who gets to decide whether he in a cheerleader sco skirt counts or not, you know
who's bills. So he is the he's the one who the governor, who the photo surfacet of now he's the one who was passing and the photosurfast of him in high school dressed as a cheerleader at some sort of high school events. And everyone started pointing this out and saying this is pretty hypocritical, and he said, no, no, no no, that doesn't count. That is not of a Korean nature, that is not lewd this other And so he has decided that he is the person who gets to decide
these things. Oh, non cheerleader outfits have never been considered like sexual at all, but now, but by that definition, even though most of us in twenty twenty three understand that trans women are women and trans men are men, they're This bill can be interpreted any number of ways.
And so if someone is enforcing us who doesn't believe that, who is to say that that trends person walking down the street in public, if I view them as a male or female impersonator and they're within the eyesight of a child, well, and they're bringing the law by walking to the grocery store, that's terrifying. When I was and we talked about this a little bit when I was in the Senate. We we were reforming No Child Left Behind,
which didn't work very well. And I had a piece in it called pseudo discrimination that that would protect LGBT kids Q plus kids, who would give them the same rights as were given to other kids, h you know, race and gender. And I went to a colleague, a Republican colleague who was a friend of mine, and asked
him to sponsor this. And what you could do is if a kid was being bullied for being LGBTQ, they could go to the principal, go to the supertendent of schools, and if they didn't get any that they could sue, they could sue us like the other kids I was talking about. And and this senator said to me, oh, if they could do that, yeah, they'll just act more gay. Well first of all, all right, and I said, I said, I said no, no, no, I don't want to say
his name. I said no, And he goes, oh, you watch. Well, I hope he's watching right now and knows that I am acting this gay no matter what happens around. But well, well, kids in school, LGBT kids in school, I have great absolutee There's all kinds of bullying obviously, and this is would this would really have helped kids? No, absolutely, I can from my personal experience. I grew up in a
small town in Connecticut. I was very very flamboyant and myself from a very young age, and I was identified by other people as queer before I even understood how to do that myself. And I was mercilessly bullied in school and I went to my vice principal who told me that I should probably tone it down a little. So thank you for working on that. It's I mean, it's I but it was terribly frustrating. And the idea that children are somehow going to be made more queer
by access to queer culture. I mean I was very queer without any access. And when I finally found Drag, which is where it, you know, it was not like, oh, that's a cool job, I want to do that when I grow up. It was there's a container for who I am. There's something out there for me, and that
saved my life. I mean, suicide rates among queer kids and suicidal ideation is more than half of trans and non binary kids of suicidal ideation, which when I heard that statistic, I was like, that seems low because every queer person I know has thought about suicide in their youth.
And I barely made it out of my childhood. But I did because I had a little bit of access to this glimpse of a world outside that would accept me for who I am, and not just in spite of who I am, but because of who I am. I here, Hi here, and I'm going to call I'm gonna start thanking you. You can support the ACLUS work by donating at the link below. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show
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