When Hating People You Know Nothing About Just Isn't Enough, Part Deux
Hypocrisy is NEVER a good look
To be wicked is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that you are; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil from stupidity.
Charles Baudelaire
As a general rule, if you’re a lawmaker and you’re going to push a bill proscribing a specific type of behavior, it’s always a good idea to be sure that no evidence of you engaging in past said behavior will ever resurface.
Why? Because you’ll probably end up looking like a right hypocrite and asshole. Then you’ll have to try to spin your way out of the hole as people laugh at you for your hypocrisy. But, of course, the context of your past behavior won’t matter because it'll seem pretty hypocritical in light of the bill you’re advocating for.
And, in the case of Nate Schatzline…well, he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do, knowhutimean??
Of course, as one might expect, Schatzline’s response was akin to “Hey, we were young and stupid! C’mon, who doesn’t do dumb shit in college? We were kids! We were having fun!!”
(Dumb shit in college? Yeah, I once managed to get an entire concourse shut down at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as an Elvis impersonator. It’s a long story involving many MSP security officers and a red sequined jumpsuit I had to ditch. There may have been alcohol and/or marijuana involved. I’m taking that story to my grave.)
The question is whether you buy that, particularly in light of the legislation he’s now pushing legislation banning drag shows.
The Republican lawmaker who authored a bill banning drag in Texas defended a video of himself appearing in drag, saying it was “a joke.”
In the video, which was circulated Monday by a popular liberal Texas politics Twitter account and first reported by NBC News, Texas state Rep. Nate Schatzline appears to be running, skipping, and dancing while wearing a black dress and a red masquerade mask as the song “Sexy Lady” by Javi Mula plays.
User @LivingBlueTx uploaded the video to both Twitter and TikTok earlier this week with the caption “Nate Schatzline has made his entire personality attacking the LGBTQ community, trans especially children, and vowed to ban drag shows in Texas.”
Schatzline now wants us to believe that he’s different, that the person in the video was a dumb, misguided college kid just having a good time.
Now that he’s seen the light and welcomed Jesus into his life, he’s seen the error of his ways and wants to protect children from evil drag queens seeking to recruit and overtly sexualize their children.
Schatzline, a former pastor, introduced Texas’s HB 1266 in mid-January. Like dozens of bills across the US attempting to ban drag from the eyes of the public — and minors in particular — Schatzline’s bill would amend the state’s Business and Commerce Code to redefine a venue that allows drag performances as a “sexually oriented business.”
This would mean that businesses that allow drag performances — whether that be a drag queen story hour or a club night — would be in the same category as adult bookstores, “sex parlors,” and adult movie theaters.
Though it is unclear how the Texas bill would be enforced, Schatzline’s performance, under the language he introduced, appears to meet his definition of drag.
The bill defines the art form as a performance “in which a performer exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers and signs, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience for entertainment.”
Of course, he’s blaming the “Left-wing media” for blowing the video out of proportion. He says he was responding to a dare to put on a dress for a class project.
The kids at Southwestern Assemblies of God University love a good-looking guy in a dress. What young, godly man wouldn’t?
If anyone’s ever attended a drag show, you’d know that there’s little erotic about it. Instead, it’s men dressing up (in a generally over-the-top fashion) in women’s clothing. The entertainment, whether musical, reading, or acting, follows from there.
If a Republican happens to find a drag performance erotic and titillating, I think that says more about them and their peccadilloes than it ever could about the performance. And if that’s the case, they shouldn’t be posting legislation banning drag shows- because they’re too terrified to address the real issue- their sexuality.
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Rep. Schatzline has some issues to address, chief among them hypocrisy. Granted, his drag days may be long behind him, but if one of them was captured on video, how are we to know there weren’t others? Perhaps he’s not the poster boy for “Christian morality” that he’d like us to think he is.
And perhaps drag is just a harmless means of expression, not the sexually-charged recruitment of children that Republicans would have us believe. But, on the other hand, maybe it’s not about drag; perhaps it’s just another shot in the GOP’s war on transgender individuals. After all, Republicans seem intent on linking drag with transsexuality, as if there’s a natural and undeniable connection- which seems a bit of a stretch.
(“It’s not the guy in the dress, it’s the GAY in the dress.”)
As if Rep. Nate Schatzline’s hypocrisy wasn’t enough, let’s consider Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who has his own drag past.
That’s Gov. Lee in the picture above, circa 1977.
The Republican governor and his office haven’t confirmed or denied whether it was Lee in the photo. The Tennessee Holler, a progressive local publication, asked Lee in a video interview whether or not he remembered “dressing in drag in 1977.”
“What a ridiculous, ridiculous question that is,” Lee said in the video. “Conflating something like that to sexualized entertainment in front of children, which is a very serious subject.”
Again we’re back to a Republican creating a non-existent problem. Drag shows are not “sexualized entertainment.” Republicans choose to present them that way because it suits their narrative, which is that they hate transgender individuals specifically and the LGBTQ community in general.
It’s not the guy in the dress; it’s the “gay in the dress,” right, Governor?
Drag shows haven’t been a problem for years, but Republicans have discovered that hating transgender people is a winner among their base, and they can get a two-fer with drag shows. Never mind that, as previously mentioned, there’s nothing intentionally erotic about drag shows. They’re not intended to be sexually provocative. It’s just something sexually repressed Republicans feel they can jump on and score some cheap political points. And what good, God-fearing White Conservative Christian heterosexual doesn’t LOVE to slap down those who are different, and that they can’t be bothered to understand. Even if what they’re doing is causing no harm.
Lee’s press secretary, Jade Cooper Byers, told NBC News in an email to say that “any attempt to conflate this serious issue with lighthearted school traditions is dishonest and disrespectful to Tennessee families.”
The “serious issue” Byers is talking about is the state’s bill, HB 9, which would ban “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest” from performing in public spaces or in front of minors.
Lee has a little over a week to sign the bill and has said he plans to. But even if he vetoes it, the Republican-controlled legislature can, and likely would, override his actions to enact the bill into law as soon as April 1. Those who violate the law would first be charged with a misdemeanor, and subsequent violations could land individuals with up to six years in prison for felony charges.
While Lee’s teenage cheerleader drag would not necessarily be defined as “prurient” or be criminalized under the drag ban, advocates say that language of the bill is intentionally fuzzy.
The “bill is intentionally fuzzy” because the “fuzzy” language will allow them to go after transgender individuals in Tennessee. So it’s not just about hating “the gay in the dress,” it's about hating those wanting to undergo gender-affirming healthcare.
Fuzzy is valuable. Fuzzy works to their advantage. And fuzzy allows them to cast a wide net when it works to their advantage.
Though transgender individuals mean no one any harm, and their pursuit of transitioning will in no way negatively impact the quality of life of White Conservative Christian heterosexuals, the busybodies will have their way. They believe that they, and ONLY they, as followers of Jesus Christ, should have the right to determine how others live.
It’s precisely what Jesus would do, eh? Welcome to Gilead.
Stop and feel the Christian love and charity wash over you for a moment. And remember that when others decide how you may or may not live your life, you are no longer free. When White Conservative Christian heterosexuals are convinced that their belief system ipso facto places them above you, making you “less than,” it’s only a matter of time before they come for you.
So whether it’s Nate Schatzline, Bill Lee, or someone else, remember this. Today they may be coming for drag performers. Tomorrow it may be transgender individuals. The day after that, it may be you and me.
What happens then?
Not only does the fuzziness allow them to cast a wide net, it also justifies them in casting no net at all when the situation serves their purposes. So they can give someone like Rudy Giulliani a free pass, because he's a rabid neo-Fascist, but some random bloke entertaining kids at a library gets thrown in the meat grinder.