The Twisted Bar and Grill in The Colony held a drag brunch over the weekend.
“Twisted and Turnt” featured a five-act drag performance that included a mix of comedy, audience contests, and sponsored giveaways. The event was hosted by Ashley Davenport and featured acts by drag performers Barbie Davenport Dupree, Giscelle, Blue Valentine, Calia Cruz, and Mulan Alexander.
The show drew in a medium-sized crowd of mostly male adults. However, Davenport said that before the show began, the venue had to turn away an underage girl and her family who were already dining at the establishment and had asked to stay for the performance.
Davenport told the audience they could not allow the minor at the show and were saddened to have to turn her away. To make up for the girl’s disappointment, Davenport and Cruz took pictures with her and her family.
“Let’s be clear, I’m a man up here in drag. I look like a clown, so anything I say should not be taken seriously,” Davenport told the audience. “Drag is not a crime — it’s fun. So again, don’t take anything I say as serious, ’cause we’re going to talk a lot of s**t and have a lot of laughs.”
However, not everyone feels the same way as Davenport about drag performances. Some in fact believe that drag is disrespectful to women.
West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler, for instance, expressed such a sentiment when he canceled a drag show at the university in March over concerns such shows are “derisive, divisive and demoralizing” to women.
“Drag shows stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against womanhood,” Wendler wrote in an email to the school community, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
In an attempt to prevent sexually oriented performances from being held in front of children, Texas lawmakers sought to enact SB12, which has been derided as a “drag ban” by detractors.
“A person who controls the premises of a commercial enterprise may not allow a sexually oriented performance to be presented on the premises in the presence of an individual younger than 18 years of age,” reads the law.
However, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas issued a restraining order and preliminary injunction prior to the legislation’s enactment, preventing it from going into effect.
U.S. District Judge David Hittner later ruled the legislation unconstitutional, issuing a permanent injunction and blocking it from becoming law.
“Without a clear understanding of ‘prurient sexual interest,’ other terms such as ‘lewd’ and ‘Performer’ (which is undefined in SB 12) become problematic,” Hittner wrote in the decision, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. “[I]t is not readily known to someone of ‘ordinary intelligence’ how SB 12 will be enforced.”
In response to the ruling, some activist groups celebrated the decision.
The American Civil Liberty Union of Texas, which filed a lawsuit against the state in an attempt to stop the law from taking effect, praised the federal ruling, claiming the law specifically targets LGBTQ people and would undermine the artistic expression of drag.
“LGBTQIA+ Texans, venue owners, performers, and our allies all came together to uphold free expression in our state — and we won,” the activist group said in a post on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). “This work isn’t done but for now we celebrate. Long live Texas drag!”
Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed the bill into law in June, said he would continue to fight for the law’s enactment.
“Federal judge in Texas blocks a law I signed that bans sexually explicit drag shows in front of children,” Abbott said on X. “This is absurd. We will fight to have this overturned & to protect our children from this indoctrination.”
