Texas
North Texas superintendent orders books removed from schools, targeting titles about transgender people
The Granbury superintendent’s comments, made on a leaked recording, raise constitutional concerns, legal experts said.

Published
1 year agoon
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune
This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published. The story was also produced in partnership with NBC News.
In early January, a day before students returned from winter break, Jeremy Glenn, the superintendent of the Granbury Independent School District in North Texas, told a group of librarians he’d summoned to a district meeting room that he needed to speak from his heart.
“I want to talk about our community,” Glenn said, according to a recording of the Jan. 10 meeting obtained and verified by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Glenn explained that Granbury, the largest city in a county where 81% of residents voted for then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, is “very, very conservative.”
He noted that members of Granbury’s school board — his bosses — were also very conservative. And to any school employees who might have different political beliefs, Glenn said, “You better hide it,” adding, “Here in this community, we’re going to be conservative.”
That’s why, he said, he needed to talk to them about some of the books available in the school district’s libraries.
For months, conservative parents and politicians across Texas had been pressuring districts to remove from school libraries any books that contain explicit descriptions of sex, labeling several young adult novels as “pornography.” Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, called for criminal investigations into school employees who make such content available to students.
Many of the titles targeted statewide have featured queer characters and storylines, but those calling for the books’ removal have repeatedly said they are concerned only with sex and vulgarity, not with suppressing the views of LGBTQ students and authors.
Glenn made a similar argument during his closed-door meeting with librarians in Granbury, which is about an hour’s drive southwest of Dallas.
“I don’t want a kid picking up a book, whether it’s about homosexuality or heterosexuality, and reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries,” Glenn said.
He also made it clear that his concerns specifically included books with LGBTQ themes, even if they do not describe sex. Those comments, according to legal experts, raise concerns about possible violations of the First Amendment and federal civil rights laws that protect students from discrimination based on their gender and sexuality.
“And I’m going to take it a step further with you,” he said, according to the recording. “There are two genders. There’s male, and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women. And there are women that think they’re men. And again, I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.”
Minutes later, after someone asked whether titles on racism were acceptable, Glenn said books on different cultures “are great.”
“Specifically, what we’re getting at, let’s call it what it is, and I’m cutting to the chase on a lot of this,” Glenn said. “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ and the sex — sexuality — in books. That’s what the governor has said that he will prosecute people for, and that’s what we’re pulling out.”
Over the next two weeks, the school district embarked on one of the largest book removals in the country, pulling about 130 titles from library shelves for review. Nearly three-quarters of the removed books featured LGBTQ characters or themes, according to a ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis. Others dealt with racism, sex ed, abortion and women’s rights.
Two months later, a volunteer review committee voted to permanently ban three of the books and return the others to shelves. But that may not be the end of the process.
In his recorded comments to librarians, Glenn described the review of 130 titles as the first step in a broader appraisal of library content, and a new policy approved by the school board later in January grants him and other administrators broad authority to unilaterally remove additional titles they deem inappropriate, with no formal review and no way for the public to easily find out what has been pulled from shelves.
Legal, education and First Amendment experts contacted by ProPublica, NBC News and the Tribune said the audio of the superintendent, combined with the decision to abruptly remove books from circulation, even temporarily, raises constitutional concerns.
Glenn’s comments also call into question the district’s commitment to fostering a safe and inclusive school environment for LGBTQ students and could be grounds for a complaint to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which enforces federal anti-discrimination laws, the experts said.
“This audio is very much evidence of anti-LGBTQ and particularly anti-trans discrimination,” said Kate Huddleston, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, who reviewed the recording at the request of NBC News, ProPublica and the Tribune. “It is very much saying the quiet part out loud in a way that provides very significant evidence that book removals in the district are occurring because of anti-LGBTQ bias.”
In a written statement, Glenn said the district was committed to supporting students of all backgrounds. And although he said the district’s primary focus is educating students, “the values of our community will always be reflected in our schools.”
“In Granbury and across Texas we are seeing parents push back and demand elected officials put safeguards in place to protect their children from materials that serve no academic purpose, but rather push a political narrative,” Glenn said in the statement. “As a result, classrooms and libraries have turned schools into battle grounds for partisan politics.”
None of Granbury’s school board trustees responded to messages requesting comment. District spokesperson Jeff Meador sent a statement emphasizing that all of the books permanently removed from shelves in Granbury are “sexually explicit and not age-appropriate” and noting that district libraries “continue to house a socially and culturally diverse collection of books for students to read, including books which analyze and explore LGBTQ+ issues.”
The three books the committee voted to remove were “This Book Is Gay,” a coming out guide for LGBTQ teens by transgender author Juno Dawson that includes detailed descriptions of sex; “Out of Darkness,” by Ashley Hope Pérez, a young adult novel about a romance between a Mexican American girl and a Black boy that includes a rape scene and other mature content; and “We Are the Ants,” by Shaun David Hutchinson, a coming-of-age novel about a gay teenager that includes explicit sexual language.
At least one member of the volunteer review committee was dissatisfied that only three books have been permanently removed so far, and she has started calling for a second review of the ones that have been returned.
“There are people who want to tear down values and force theirs and then also force acceptance,” Monica Brown, the committee member, said in a Facebook video following the decision. Brown did not respond to a request for comment.
One of the Granbury ISD employees in attendance at the Jan. 10 meeting with librarians said that regardless of which books are pulled from shelves or returned, Glenn’s comments left her afraid to display or purchase LGBTQ books going forward — a chilling effect that she said could limit the diversity of Granbury library catalogs for years to come. The staff member, who was not the source of the audio, spoke on the condition that she not be named, because she feared retaliation from the district.
“He literally said books on trans issues have no place in a school,” she said. “It was alarming.”
The superintendent’s comments reflect a broader national debate. Conservative state legislatures across the country have been considering bills to restrict the ways educators teach about gender and sexuality in schools. This month, the Florida Legislature passed the Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its critics, which restricts or bans discussion of LGBTQ issues in the classroom.
Conservative activists and politicians pushing these changes nationally say the goal is to prevent teachers from having sensitive conversations with students unless the parents give their consent. Some have at times conflated sex and sexual orientation, accusing educators of attempting to “groom” young children because the teachers had discussed the existence of transgender people and same-sex relationships. Opponents contend that the measures discriminate against LGBTQ students and educators and violate federal laws meant to prevent discrimination in schools.
These changes coincide with attempts in several conservative states to limit the rights of transgender minors to participate in school sports and to access gender-affirming medical care. Last month, Abbott issued a directive — temporarily halted by a Texas judge — ordering the state’s child welfare agency to open abuse investigations into any reported instances of minors receiving such medical care, including the prescription of puberty blockers or hormones.
As superintendent of a district that’s home to more than 7,400 students, Glenn is responsible for implementing and enforcing policies that ensure that children are not discriminated against based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
After listening to the recording of Glenn’s remarks, Lou Whiting, a nonbinary junior at Granbury High School, said they were outraged. Whiting and another student who’s part of the LGBTQ community said classmates at Granbury have harassed them at school, but they’ve avoided reporting the harassment because they worried administrators wouldn’t take their complaints seriously.
Glenn’s comments validated those fears, Whiting said.
“I don’t feel incredibly safe or welcomed by a large majority of the students at my school,” Whiting said. “I’ve been called slurs. I’ve been verbally attacked. I’ve been physically attacked. But it kind of feels worse when the attacks are coming from adults, from the people who are supposed to keep us safe.”
“A Very Conservative Board”
The meeting with librarians wasn’t the first time Glenn had publicly embraced socially conservative values in schools.
In 2014, when he was superintendent at another district, he and a pair of education professors wrote a book called “Daily Devotionals for Superintendents,” which lamented the legalization of same-sex marriage and the passage of state laws “making it a crime to counsel gay young people about changing their sexual orientation.”
In another section of the book, Glenn and his co-authors said those pushing for broader acceptance of “alternative lifestyles” and other cultural changes are doing so through the indoctrination of children in schools, as “was done by Hitler when he took over Germany.” They warned that school superintendents will face pressure to “recognize the demands of alternative life-style adults,” adding, “As a superintendent, you will have to be strong and courageous to stand against the onslaught of the enemy. Your country and your children’s future are at stake.”
Glenn, who arrived at Granbury ISD in 2018 following stints leading two other Texas districts, said he couldn’t recall if he wrote those specific passages, but he acknowledged co-authoring the book, adding, “It’s fair to say I am aware of its content.”
In November, voters in Granbury elected a pair of school board members who, while campaigning, also raised concerns about the spread of LGBTQ-affirming curricula in schools. Melanie Graft rose to local prominence after leading a conservative movement in 2015 to remove a pair of LGBTQ-themed picture books from the children’s section at Granbury’s public library. She ran alongside Courtney Gore, the co-host of a local far-right internet talk show.
As candidates, the women promised to stop the “indoctrination” of students and rid the district of educational materials they said promote LGBTQ ideology or what they referred to as critical race theory, a university-level academic framework based on the idea that racism is embedded in U.S. legal and other structures.
In the weeks after Graft’s and Gore’s election victories, Glenn began asking district administrators about several books, including “This Book Is Gay,” that an unnamed school board member had found on the district’s online card catalog, according to text messages obtained by a parent through an open records request and shared with the news organizations.
The text messages included screenshots of eight titles, all of which deal with LGBTQ topics, with the keyword search terms “gay,” “trans” and “gender” highlighted in some of the book descriptions.
In a December text message, Glenn asked an administrator in charge of overseeing district libraries if any of the books were physically on shelves and available to students. Librarians needed to have a sense of urgency in responding to community complaints about books, Glenn wrote, “otherwise this will consume us in the spring.”
The list comprised titles that were aimed at helping transgender and LGBTQ teens navigate life and that told teen love stories through an LGBTQ lens, as well as an LGBTQ-themed fairy tale. Although some of the books included descriptions of sex, others did not.
Glenn referred to concerns from a board member during his Jan. 10 meeting with librarians.
“We do have a very conservative board,” Glenn said, according to the recording. “They are elected, and recently more conservative. And so that’s what our community is. That’s what our job is.”
NBC News, ProPublica and the Tribune spoke to three Granbury teachers who were not present at the Jan. 10 meeting but who have listened to the recording and said they were troubled by Glenn’s remarks. The teachers said they’ve seen additional library books being pulled from district shelves — mostly young adult books containing talk of sex — that haven’t been subject to a formal review, raising concerns among staff members that content is being eliminated with no oversight from the public.
The teachers said they feared retribution and spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing Glenn’s comments advising educators against sharing opinions that don’t align with the conservative views of district leaders.
“I was disturbed that our superintendent would say those things,” one of the teachers said, referring to Glenn’s comments about there being no place for transgender and LGBTQ content in school libraries.
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Schools have wide latitude to remove library books that are deemed age-inappropriate or “pervasively vulgar.” But free speech advocates say Republican politicians and school districts have applied an overly broad definition to the phrase in recent months, mislabeling coming-of-age stories and sex-ed books as pornography.
“The most striking feature of the current crop of book challenges is this effort to mischaracterize literature and sexual education resources, which clearly have educational value, and stigmatizing them by claiming that they violate obscenity statutes,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Under a 40-year-old U.S. Supreme Court legal decision, Island Trees School District v. Pico, a public school system can’t remove a book because school board members or administrators disagree with its viewpoints or ideas, including its discussion of LGBTQ identities.
The 1982 case dealt with the removal of books deemed “anti-American” and “anti-Christian” by a school district in Levittown, New York. At the time, a school board member testified that he believed it was his duty to make decisions for the school district that reflected the community’s conservative values. Those comments were echoed decades later in the Granbury superintendent’s directive to librarians.
“If the evidence shows that the motivation for a book removal is to keep these ideas from getting to children, then the courts are very skeptical,” said North Carolina attorney Neal Ramee, who advises school districts on constitutional issues. “That could potentially lead to a finding of a violation of the First Amendment.”
Justin Driver, a Yale Law School professor, former clerk for two Supreme Court justices and author of “The Schoolhouse Gate,” which analyzes legal battles over education, said the similarities between the Pico case and the Granbury situation are “striking and overwhelming.” As a result, he said, Glenn’s statements to librarians “would seem to place the school district in an unenviable litigating position.”
Yet because the Pico case was a divided opinion, some legal scholars said the issue is ripe for another appearance in front of the Supreme Court.
LGBTQ Students Push Back
On Jan. 11, a day after Glenn’s meeting with librarians, Kennedy Tackett, a 17-year-old senior at Granbury High School, was working in a student-run store on campus when one of her friends approached, looking upset.
The friend had been volunteering in the school library and noticed several boxes filled with books that had been taken off of shelves.
“She said, ‘Kennedy, a lot of them look like they’re LGBTQ,’” said Tackett, who is bisexual. “And so I immediately texted my parents, and I was like, ‘Hey, have y’all heard about this?’”
In the days that followed, Tackett and her father, a former school board trustee who has criticized the school district’s conservative shift, used public records requests to unearth what the district hadn’t shared publicly: the list of more than 130 books that librarians had been directed to immediately remove from shelves. (The records also included the December text messages about the eight LGBTQ books.)
Some of the 130 books had no sexual content whatsoever, including “George” by Alex Gino, a book meant for children in elementary school that tells the story of a transgender child who’s coming to terms with her gender identity.
Most of the books appeared to come from a larger list of 850 titles dealing with racism, sex and LGBTQ themes that had been compiled by state Rep. Matt Krause. The Republican lawmaker said in a letter sent to districts across Texas that the books might violate a new state law that restricts the ways teachers can talk about “currently controversial” issues, including racism and sexuality. Krause did not respond to a request for comment.
Tackett created an online petition calling on the district to return the books to shelves, quickly drawing more than 600 signatures. A couple of weeks later, on Jan. 24, she and several other LGBTQ students showed up at a meeting of the Granbury ISD board of trustees and called on the district to reverse course.
Instead, the board voted to amend a district policy that required contested books to remain on shelves while a committee reviewed them, giving administrators more discretion to remove titles that they deem to lack “educational suitability.”
“The job of the superintendent and the school board is not only to protect the students in this district, but to make them feel like they have a place in this community,” Tackett told the board during public comments prior to the vote. “But I gotta tell you, from what I’ve seen so far, you are failing at your job.”
The comments, which would later go viral and be broadcast on national news reports, drew a rebuke from Glenn during the meeting. Glenn announced that the district had previously removed five books unrelated to LGBTQ themes that were written by Abbi Glines, an author known for including explicit sex scenes that push the boundaries of young adult fiction.
“Let’s not misrepresent things. We’re not taking Shakespeare or Hemingway off the shelves,” Glenn said, at one point referring to those who frequently speak out at school board meetings as “radicals” and emphasizing that the district was focused on sexually explicit content. “We’re not going and grabbing every socially, culturally or religiously diverse book and pulling them. That’s absurd. And the people that are saying that are gaslighters, and it’s designed to incite division.”
Those comments gave Whiting, the nonbinary Granbury junior, an idea: Using Granbury’s G logo, Whiting designed a T-shirt with the words “Radical Gaslighter” and created a page where students could buy them. They ended up selling nearly 250 to people all over the country, raising more than $2,000 for the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Foundation.
By early February, word began to spread through Granbury that someone had recorded Glenn’s comments to librarians. The employee who’d made the recording did not post it publicly or share it with reporters, but soon a copy of it was circulating among a small group of educators and community activists.
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That month, the ACLU of Texas sent a letter to Granbury calling on the district to apologize for the book removals and to release a statement affirming its commitment to “LGBTQ+ and racial inclusivity.” That was before Huddleston, the ACLU lawyer, reviewed the recording at the request of reporters.
Huddleston said the recorded comments also raise serious questions about what else has been said behind closed doors, not just in Granbury, but also in other districts where books are being banned.
“This is very strong evidence of what is happening in the background,” she said. “But it also raises a host of questions about all the other districts in Texas where this is happening and we don’t have audio.”
Tackett, the Granbury senior, cried after listening to the recording of Glenn’s remarks. She thought of his public comments accusing critics of trying to deceive the public about the district’s motivations for removing and reviewing books. If anyone was gaslighting the community, Tackett said, it was him.
“It’s unsettling,” she said. “You can’t just turn your back on the students you’re supposed to be protecting.”
Disclosure: The ACLU of Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Jeremy Schwartz has been an investigative reporter in Texas for nearly a decade, covering issues including voting rights and border security for the Austin American-Statesman and USA Today Network. His work has resulted in the overhaul of Texas' inspection process for farmworker housing, sparked Congressional investigations of a failed Department of Veterans Affairs research program and uncovered misleading border arrest and drug seizure statistics maintained by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Schwartz won the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' Latino Issues award for his 2017 investigation into the political underrepresentation of Latinos in Texas cities and counties, and the Headliners Foundation of Texas Reporter of the Year award, among other honors. He previously served as Cox Newspapers' Latin America correspondent in Mexico City from 2005 to 2009, and before that, he covered the U.S. Border Patrol and immigration at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

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88th Texas Legislature
Texas bill advancing in the Senate would block minors from updating gender on birth certificates
Opponents of the bill call it a “power play aimed at making the lives of transgender children as difficult as possible.” The chamber is expected to vote on this legislation Wednesday.

Published
2 days agoon
28 Mar 2023
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune
A bill seeking to block transgender and nonbinary Texas youth from updating their birth certificate with their gender identity has received its first approval from the Texas Senate.
Senate Bill 162, filed by Republican state Sen. Charles Perry of Lubbock, proposes requiring an individual’s sex assigned at birth to be included on their birth certificate and limiting the circumstances in which this information could be changed for minors. The proposal lists very few exceptions.
“Senate Bill 162 prohibits sex listed on the birth certificate of a minor from being amended unless the change is to correct a clerical error or complete the birth certificate if the sex was not listed at the time of birth or if the child is intersex and the sex is later determined,” Perry said during the Senate meeting.
The Republican-controlled Senate preliminarily passed SB 162 on Tuesday with a vote of 19-11 after hearing no debate. The bill now awaits its final vote from the full chamber before it could advance to the House.
LGBTQ advocates said the legislation would make it impossible for trans and nonbinary Texas youth to update their birth certificate and subsequently other government documents — such as those required for identification for education, traveling and employment — with their gender identity.
“Birth certificates are a foundational document,” Sasha Buchert, a senior attorney with Lambda Legal, testified during the bill’s committee hearing. “And when people have identity documents — especially trans folks — that are inconsistent with who they are, it places them at risk of violence, bullying and even harassment.”
Beyond these dangers, this proposal could interrupt the process of enrolling in school, participating in extracurricular activities and applying for a passport — according to Ash Hall, a policy and advocacy strategist on LGBTQ rights with ACLU Texas who also testified against the bill at its committee hearing.
The process to change a minor’s gender on a birth certificate is lengthy and convoluted, Hall said. Currently, there is no difference in the process for minors and adults requesting a change to the gender marker on a Texas document — such as the sex listed on a birth certificate — according to a guide from the Texas Legal Service Center. The guide recommends that families seek the advice of an attorney for changes to a minor’s gender marker.
A court order is required to change gender markers on Texas documents. The decision to allow or deny a gender marker change resides with local judges, who have discretion over what proof is needed to confirm the change before issuing a court order.
Individuals seeking a gender marker change on their documents then present the court order to make changes to IDs, such as birth certificates or driver’s licenses.
The proposal would essentially erase trans and nonbinary youth from public life, according to the bill’s opponents.
“It’s already really difficult for trans people to update their birth certificates, and the vast majority of trans people are forced to live with inaccurate documents [that don’t] reflect who we are in the first place,” Hall told The Texas Tribune. “It’s deeply unnecessary, and it is only meant to harm.”
Jacqueline Murphy, a trans woman, testified during the committee’s hearing earlier this month that she was able to update her birth certificate as a minor — and that has made it easier for her to acquire identification for college enrollment and employment.
“The benefits for my peace of mind and physical safety cannot be overstated,” she said. “I expect the aim of this bill is to undermine the legitimacy of trans identity as a whole, particularly among children. … This is a power play aimed at making the lives of transgender children as difficult as possible.”
Hall added this bill includes vague language about designating the sex of intersex children. The bill would require those issuing birth certificates to fill in this field for intersex children “whose sex is later determined.” But missing from the legislation, Hall said, is when that determination is made.
“The intersex community, one of the basic rights they’re asking for is that their bodies not be operated on as infants when they can’t consent and that they get the opportunity to decide what their gender is, instead of having one forced upon them,” Hall said. The bill could eliminate the option for intersex children to change the gender initially determined for them.
Meanwhile, SB 162’s supporters said the bill is needed to “protect current laws that we have to actually protect biological sex,” such as existing restrictions in Texas on trans student athletes’ participation at the high school level. Senate Bill 15, which seeks to extend these restrictions to the college level, has also received preliminary approval from the full chamber — and there’s already enough support for the proposal in the House.
“It’s vitally important to know a person’s sex at birth,” said Jonathan Covey, policy director for the conservative group Texas Values. “It’s particularly important in light of fairness in women’s sports competitions.”
The bill’s backers also support Senate Bill 14, which was heard in the same committee hearing as SB 162 and dominated the meeting. SB 14 seeks to block trans kids from accessing transition-related medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies. The ban would also include surgeries, though these rarely happen for youth.
SB 14 is also a priority legislation for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate. The full chamber is expected to discuss and vote on this legislation this week.
William Melhado contributed to this story.
Disclosure: ACLU Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
88th Texas Legislature
Texas Senate committee advances bills restricting certain drag shows
Proposed legislation from Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, would criminalize explicit performances where children are present and strip libraries of state funding for hosting any event featuring performers in drag. Critics say the bill is discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Published
3 days agoon
27 Mar 2023
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune
It’s been a long day for Robyn Valentine.
Standing in a packed Capitol hallway, the Corpus Christi-based drag performer could be spotted with her pink wig, stage makeup and baby blue clown outfit that comes with a ruffle collar and tulle sleeves. The look had taken about three hours to put together.
“I woke up at about 1 in the morning, just so I could get ready to be in drag,” she said.
For her, being in drag has always come naturally.
“I have always felt drawn to femininity,” she said. “Drag shows me an outlet in which I can embrace being a feminine gay male, but also doing so in an artistic way.”
It’s also business. Valentine has been a drag entertainer for over a decade, and in recent years she’s been performing live and hosting her own shows. And following the COVID-19 economic closures, she said one of her biggest focuses has been working with local businesses — something that has “created a sense of community.”
But now, she worries that Republican legislation designed to limit certain drag performances — on top of rising threats to and protests against these shows — could take away most of what she has built. So it was a no-brainer for her to drive four hours from the coast to Austin in the early morning to fight these bills, which she said target a minority group instead of protecting children, as the bill authors say.
“I came here because the attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community are not going to stop,” Valentine said. “I do fear for the future and what it could mean for my community and my own personal safety, which is why we need to draw a line in the sand now.”
Several other drag performers said they felt the same way as they gathered Thursday around the rotunda and eventually inside the Senate chamber — many of whom came decked out in higher heels, bigger wigs and brighter outfits — to make their voice heard on Senate Bill 12 and Senate Bill 1601. Four days later, the Senate State Affairs Committee voted to send both bills to the full chamber on a 6-2 vote along the partisan line. These proposals would have to pass both the Senate and the House before it could become law.
“I do get nervous. I do get scared. I’ve even had to cancel a show because I’ve had severe anxiety about it,” said Brigitte Bandit, an Austin-based drag performer who donned a bright pink floor-length gown and a big pink wig. “But ultimately, what am I going to do? Hide? I can’t hide. I have to be able to continue fighting for these things in being present and being visible.”
During the Thursday committee hearing, dozens of drag performers and their allies testified against these bills, outnumbering the the bills’ supporters. Opponents of the legislation also said the Republican-led efforts to criminalize certain drag performances were attacks on Texans’ First Amendment rights, while others said the legislation took away Texas parents’ rights to decide what content or culture their children are exposed to.
On the other side, the smaller contingent of the bills’ supporters say the legislation is needed to protect children from sexually explicit materials.
Filed by Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola, SB 12 would impose a $10,000 fine on business owners who host drag shows in front of children — if those performances are sexually oriented. The bill defines a sexually oriented performance as one in which someone is naked or in drag and “appeals to the prurient interest in sex.” The U.S. Supreme Court defines prurient interests as “erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion.”
Compared to several other Republican proposals that seek to restrict drag shows — including Senate Bill 476 that Hughes previously filed — SB 12 scales down the proposed restriction on drag shows. But performers and their allies said the bill’s language is still vague.
“The bill being proposed is being left purposely vague to scare people out of interpretation,” Valentine said prior to the hearing. “I’ve seen many different people propose different interpretations already.”
During the Thursday hearing, Democratic Sen. José Menéndez of San Antonio voiced a similar concern about SB 12.
“I am concerned that what this is going to do is just put a target on the backs of certain people in certain businesses,” he said.
Hughes also filed SB 1601, which would withhold state funds from municipal libraries that host events in which drag performers read kids’ books to children.
These libraries don’t receive their operational funding directly from the state, according to a statement from the Texas Library Association. Instead, libraries can get money through competitive grant programs run by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, the association said — around $2 million is distributed each year. SB 1601 could stop libraries hosting drag shows from being able to receive such grants the year after the events were held, the TLA said.
Baylor Johnson, the marketing and public information program manager for the Austin Public Library, is opposing SB 1601. In the past three years, the Austin Public Library has hosted at least two drag queen storytime programs at the request of members, which he said were age-appropriate and earned positive responses from families.
“Austin Public Library supports a parent’s right to make decisions about what kind of learning or entertainment experiences are appropriate for their child,” Johnson said. “Would a female librarian donning a Santa hat and beard to read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ jeopardize the library’s state funding?”
The bills’ opponents also spoke about the importance of drag shows to the Texas economy, with these events drawing patrons to restaurants and bars to serve as an economic driver for small-business owners. They have also been a key way to raise funds for charities.
Janson Woodlee, who spoke on behalf of the Equality Alliance, an LGBTQ advocacy and philanthropic organization in Central Texas, testified that drag performances were a central component of the organization’s annual “Unite The Fight Gala.” Woodlee said last year’s gala raised over $200,000 for LGBTQ organizations in Texas.
On the other hand, less than a dozen supporters of the bills spoke at Thursday’s hearing. They said the legislation is needed to protect children from explicit materials and performances.
“Bringing children around sexual content is a targeted assault on their minds and bodies that should never be tolerated in a civilized society,” said Kelly Neidert, a conservative activist and founder of Protect Texas Kids, an organization that protests drag events.
Protect Texas Kids has been part of at least 14 drag event protests since it was founded just before Pride Month last June.
But the bills’ opponents said lawmakers are focusing on the wrong issue if they are trying to protect kids. Instead, they implored lawmakers to turn their attention toward gun violence or sexual abuse by church members.
Additionally, they say drag is simply an art form that shouldn’t be attacked.
“To restrict drag — an art form — in any way is a direct attack on my fundamental rights as an American and as a performer,” said Jay Thomas, an Austin resident who performs in drag as Bobby Pudrido.
William Melhado contributed to this story.
The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Amarillo
West Texas A&M University president cancels student drag show, saying it degrades women
Students and First Amendment lawyers say President Walter Wendler’s portrayal of drag shows is off base and the cancellation violates free-speech rights.

Published
3 days agoon
27 Mar 2023
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune
West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler is drawing ire for canceling a student drag show, arguing that such performances degrade women and are “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny.”
Students and First Amendment lawyers reject those assertions, calling his comments a mischaracterization of the art form. They also argue that the cancellation violates students’ constitutional rights and a state law that broadly protects free speech on college campuses, potentially setting the university up for a lawsuit.
“Not only is this a gross and abhorrent comparison of two completely different topics, but it is also an extremely distorted and incorrect definition of drag as a culture and form of performance art,” students wrote in an online petition condemning Wendler’s letter and urging him to reinstate the show.
Students plan to protest every day this week on the campus in the small West Texas city of Canyon, according to a social media post by the Open and Affirming Congregations of the Texas Panhandle.
“Drag is not dangerous or discriminatory, it is a celebration and expression of individuals,” student Signe Elder said in a statement. “Amidst the current climate of growing anti-trans and anti-drag rhetoric, we believe that it is important now more than ever to stand together and be heard.”
Elder is part of a group of students who have organized under the name Buffs for Drag, referring to the school’s buffalo mascot, to protest Wendler’s actions.
Drag shows frequently feature men dressing as women in exaggerated styles and have been a mainstay in the LGBTQ community for decades. Drag performers say their work is an expression of queer joy — and a form of constitutionally protected speech about societal gender norms.
But Wendler said drag shows “stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against womanhood” in a Monday letter that was first obtained by Amarillo news site MyHighPlains.com. Wendler said the drag show was organized to raise money for The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that works to reduce suicides in the LGBTQ community. Wendler noted that it is a “noble cause” but argued the shows would be considered an act of workplace prejudice because they make fun of women.
“Forward-thinking women and men have worked together for nearly two centuries to eliminate sexism,” Wendler wrote. “Women have fought valiantly, seeking equality in the voting booth, marketplace and court of public opinion. No one should claim a right to contribute to women’s suffering via a slapstick sideshow that erodes the worth of women.”
His comments and decision to cancel the campus drag show come amid surging uproar over the lively entertainment as far-right extremist groups have recruited conservatives to protest the events, claiming that drag performances are sexualizing kids.
Republican Texas lawmakers have also homed in on the performances with a handful of bills that would regulate or restrict drag shows, including some legislation that would classify any venue that hosts a drag show as a sexually oriented business, regardless of the show’s content. On Thursday, a Senate committee will debate a scaled-back bill that would impose a $10,000 fine on business owners who host drag shows in front of children — if those performances are sexually oriented. The bill defines a sexually oriented performance as one in which someone is naked or in drag and “appeals to the prurient interest in sex.”
Rachel Hill, government affairs director for LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, said drag doesn’t mock women. Instead, she said, it’s an art form that allows performers to explore their gender expression and take back power from what she said can be stifling gender norms.
“Drag has always been a way for people who don’t easily fit into the gender binary to embrace different facets of themselves,” Hill said in a statement to The Texas Tribune. “Womanhood comes in all shapes and sizes and is what we make of it. That’s what makes drag so powerful.”
West Texas A&M student groups were organizing the drag show, called “A Fool’s Drag Race,” for months. The LGBTQ student group Spectrum advertised the show on its Instagram page, encouraging people to sign up to perform.
Wendler argued in his letter that the West Texas A&M drag show goes against the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s purpose, saying it’s inappropriate even if drag shows are not illegal.
A lawyer for the national campus free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression rejected that argument as “nonsense.”
“The only prejudice in play here is his,” said lawyer Alex Morey, arguing that Wendler has violated state and federal law by canceling the show.
In a statement to The Texas Tribune, Morey said that performances on campus such as drag shows are protected by the First Amendment.
“By unilaterally canceling the event because he personally disapproves of the views it might express, WTAMU’s president appears to have violated both his constitutional obligations and state law,” Morey said. “It’s really surprising how open he is about knowingly violating the law, especially because government officials who violate clearly established First Amendment law will not retain qualified immunity and can be held personally liable for monetary damages.”
The students who started the petition also accused Wendler of violating university policy, which states the school can’t deny student groups any benefits “on the basis of a political, religious, philosophical, ideological, or academic viewpoint expressed by the organization or any expressive activities of the organization.”
In 2019, Texas lawmakers passed a law that required universities to allow any person to engage in free-speech activities on campuses. The law passed with broad bipartisan support.
A West Texas A&M spokesperson said Tuesday morning that Wendler did not have any further comments. The Texas A&M University System, which oversees West Texas A&M, also declined to comment.
This is not the first time Wendler has been criticized for his comments related to people in the LGBTQ community. When he was chancellor of Southern Illinois University, he was criticized for pushing back on the board’s decision to extend certain medical benefits to same-sex partners, saying the measure would encourage “sinful behavior,” according to a local newspaper at the time.
Last year, Texas A&M University in College Station drew criticism from students when the office of student affairs announced it would no longer sponsor Draggieland, the annual drag show competition that started in 2020. Students held the performance last year after raising money through private donations. This year’s event is scheduled for April 6.
Alex Nguyen contributed to this story.
Disclosure: Equality Texas, Texas A&M University, Texas A&M University System and West Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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