Texas Bills Seek to Protect Children from Drag Performances, Sex Change Procedures

Texas Republicans this week pre-filed a slate of bills to pursue at the next state legislative session in January that seek to prevent children from seeing drag shows and would classify sex-change procedures for minors as child abuse.

State Rep. Jared Patterson (R-Frisco) on Nov. 14 filed HB643, which seeks to reclassify businesses that permit drag performances as “sexually oriented” businesses under Texas Local Government Code.

“I filed HB643 so that any business allowing a drag show must be classified as a sexually oriented business and if kids are permitted that there will be consequences,” Patterson said on Twitter. “You’re living in bizzaroworld if you think it’s family friendly to stuff dollars into the g string of a grown man.”

Drag shows have, until recent years, occurred mostly in bars, nightclubs, and other adult-oriented events. But recently, lewd, adult-oriented drag performances have occurred with young children present or participating at venues not classically considered to be “sexually oriented businesses.”

Texas Local Government Code defines “sexually oriented” businesses as sex parlors, nude studios, adult bookstores, adult movie theaters, adult motels, or any “other commercial enterprise the primary business of which is the offering of a service or the selling, renting, or exhibiting of devices or any other items intended to provide sexual stimulation or sexual gratification to the customer.”..(Excerpt from The Epoch Times)