A Department of Defense-wide ban on drag shows on military bases has resulted in the cancellation of at least two events that were planned for Pride Month and had been approved in advance by base officials , two defense officials confirmed to Military.com.
Shows at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany were canceled, attendees and defense officials confirmed. The two officials told Military.com that the cancellations were part of a direction from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the drag shows, which have become a target of the political right, not be stay at the bases.
Nellis’ show, whose cancellation was first reported by NBC News, drew intense criticism from Republican politicians in recent weeks, including a letter from conservative firebrand Rep. Matt Gaetz, R- Fla., sent to Austin in which he described the event as “straightforward.” attack on children.” Although a drag event at Ramstein last year faced similar attacks, this year’s event had gone unnoticed, and the LGBT community on the base looked forward to celebrating the Month of the Pride
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“We’re celebrating that we got to survive,” Lane Fox, a member of the drag company who was scheduled to perform at a Ramstein bar and whose partner is an active duty member, told Military.com on Thursday.
“The idea is for us to have these public events because for a long time we couldn’t do that because you would get arrested and beaten and killed,” Fox continued as she choked up. “And now I wake up on June 1st and it’s all corporate pride, and there are rainbows in every ad and then at the bottom of the rainbow is this big pot of lies and hate and fear” .
News of the broader ban on drag on the base comes as defense officials, including Austin, issue statements in support of Pride Month, the annual celebration celebrating the LGBT community.
“As Secretary of Defense, I remain dedicated to ensuring that our LGBTQ+ personnel across the Joint Force can continue to serve the country we all love with dignity and pride, this month and beyond,” Austin said in a statement. Thursday. .
While a Defense Department spokesman did not directly confirm that Austin issued a new order banning drag shows on base, they suggested that such actions violate existing department regulations governing organized on-base events by private organizations.
“Under the DoD Joint Ethics Regulation (JER), certain criteria must be met in order for individuals or organizations acting in a non-federal capacity to use DoD facilities and equipment,” said the Department of Defense spokeswoman. Defense, Sabrina Singh, in a statement. “As Secretary Austin has stated, DoD will not host drag events on U.S. military facilities or installations. Hosting these types of events at federally funded facilities is inconsistent with regulations on the use of DoD resources.”
Pressed about what part of the regulations the drag shows violate, the department did not have an immediate response.
An air forces The official told Military.com that base leaders must move those shows or cancel them if they are on the facility.
“Consistent with Secretary Austin’s testimony to Congress, the Air Force will not host drag events on its premises or facilities,” the official said. “Commanders have been ordered to cancel or move these events to an off-base location.”
During a March hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Gaetz pressed Austin and Chairman Gen. Mark Milley about drag shows staged on military bases. Austin repeatedly told Gaetz that these events, which are usually sponsored by community groups, “are not something the department supports or funds.”
Drag, which dates back to Elizabethan times and has become a popular form of entertainment among the LGBT community and its allies as a celebration of self-acceptance, has become a fixture of right-wing politics . Several Republican-led states have moved to ban drag shows, including Tennessee and Florida.
In the military, drag goes back decades. The first official drag show after the end of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on openly serving gays is are believed to have been celebrated at Kadena Air Base, Japan in 2014. But historical records indicate Drag performances to entertain the troops have been around since at least World War II.
Nellis, where one of this year’s canceled shows was scheduled to take place, has hosted at least two other drag shows in recent years, base public affairs officials told Military.com.
According to a copy of the event flyer posted online, the drag show scheduled for Thursday was scheduled to take place at the Nellis Club Ballroom at 4:30 p.m. local time. It was sponsored by the Nellis LGBTQ+ Pride Council and marketed as a “family-friendly show to celebrate the legacy of Stonewall and the contributions of Drag to the LGBT+ community!”
Performers Lawanda Jackson, Coco Montrese and Carne Asada were scheduled to perform, according to the poster.
Jackson told Military.com in a phone interview that a reporter broke the news about the cancellation Wednesday. The drag performer is concerned about what precedent and message the abrupt removal of the show at the base will send to service members.
“It took a second to sink in, but I was saddened by the ripple effect this was going to cause,” Jackson said. “It sets everything back.”
Ramstein’s LGBT community weathered similar criticism last year over a planned “Drag Queen Storytime” at a base library. The event was canceled as criticism began pouring in on Facebook and D.C. lawmakers, particularly a letter Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., sent to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall , calling the event “absolutely insane.”
After this incident, Ramstein’s LGBT community came together to form a non-profit organization, called KMC Pride, a reference to Kaiserslautern’s military community, to defend itself and organize LGBT-themed events.
The group staged a drag show at a grassroots bar in March, the first grassroots drag event since the history hour controversy, with little fanfare, although the founder of the organization told Military.com that they had to assure base officials that the children would not. to be present
“We had a bunch of new members and they were talking about how much fun they had and how much it meant that we had an event like this at the grassroots and there’s a group like this,” Natalie Ricketts, founder of KMC Pride. he told Military.com in an interview in May. “To be a brand new private organization and to be able to put on an event like this and be successful after everything that had happened, yes, it was a big deal.”
Ricketts said he founded the group after seeing the emotional and mental toll criticism of the drag story took on his wife, a transgender active duty member. Officially, base officials maintained at the time that the library event was canceled because it did not go through the proper approval process.
“She didn’t expect to deal with this kind of discrimination on a military base overseas,” Ricketts said of his wife. “Regardless of the actual reasoning for the cancellation [last year’s] events was, it still seems that the leadership sided with discrimination.”
This year’s canceled event was scheduled to take place on June 17 at a base pub called the Brit Bar and was restricted to people aged 18 and over. With an event canceled again this year, Fox said members of the drag troupe, called the RoyalTEA Drag Family Monarchy, fear transgender service members because drag is often combined with being transgender.
“How do you keep fighting?” Fox said. “They said we could do this if we had the right paperwork, that because it was a cultural event and a celebration for a marginalized group, really all we had to do was get our paperwork in order and then we could do it.”
“How do you win when the game is rigged? How do you play it?” Fox said.
— Rebecca Kheel can be reached at rebecca.kheel@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel.
— Thomas Novelly can be reached at thomas.novelly@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly.
Related: Top military officials questioned about drag shows on military bases
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