A federal judge in Texas struck down a 2023 state law Tuesday that sought to restrict drag shows, ruling it was unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge David Hittner, a Reagan appointee, said the measure, known as Texas Senate Bill 12, improperly restricted speech, violating the First Amendment of the Constitution. The ruling prevents state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is running for the Senate, from enforcing the law and denies his motion for a new trial.
In the ruling, Hittner also had advice for “those who find such activities as described in this case offensive.”
“The solution is relatively simple … just don’t go,” he wrote.
Paxton’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment Tuesday night.
The state law would fine business owners who were found to be in violation up to $10,000 for hosting events, while performers could be charged with a Class A misdemeanor, which could result in up to one year of jail time.
The statute, which has been the source of a yearslong legal battle, has made its way to Hittner’s courtroom before. Hittner first deemed it unconstitutional and a violation of the First Amendment in 2023, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals returned it to him in November, lifting a pause on the law and giving him specific instructions about how to reassess it.
Oh the Fifth Circuit, being all weird. It was an obvious FA violation, but if this is how they wanna play it. Watch them do some more weird chicanery because the 5th Circuit probably agrees with Paxton but there was just an unlucky draw for the bench judge.
Conservatives only want ‘free speech’ when it doesn’t collide with their skewed morals.
Conservatism is filled with puritanism and as the quote goes:
“Puritanism Is the Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happy”
Conservatives simply cannot have it if the people that may be happy are not those they consider part of their cult.
Puritanism Is the Haunting Fear That Someone, Somewhere, May Be Happy
Thank you so much for this quote! I looked it up and found that the original author listed other hilarious truths - here follows an excerpt from a page on the Internet:
In 1949 H. L. Mencken published “A Mencken Chrestomathy” which included a section called “Arcana Coelestia” which contained the following four caustic items on the theme of religion
Theology —An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.
The delusion of immortality is what ruined Egypt.
Puritanism —The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
I read the other day a book defending the Ten Commandments. The best of all arguments for them, however, was omitted. It is that there are not forty
May Ken Paxton experience many many losses to come.
I heard this week of Dolly Parton’s passing, and in one of the radio shows they mentioned that she inspired the origins of drag shows.
That right there (true or fiction) show say something about what drag shows are. There’s good in everything we do as a society… Even in coffee… That dirt muck substance other drink because they see people drinking it.
But drag shows are much easier to understand and love… The colors, the environment, the lights. Those things evoke charisma, kink, inspiration, pride.
Don’t like it? Don’t go. Easy as that. I used to go to church. I never liked it, so I don’t go. I don’t like coffee, so I simply don’t drink it.
Kinda weird comparison but even though I think coffee is amazing, it’s played a huge part in some really awful things (south America’s history has bloody coffee stains all over it). Drag shows are pretty innocent in comparison.
In my experience moving from a very blue state to a very red state in highschool was that there were a LOT more drag shows in the red state. Granted, they didn’t take them as seriously, but definitely higher in number. This was around 2000.
