Speaking to reporters outside a school on Monday, Lee, a Republican, also addressed a high-school yearbook photograph that appeared to show him wearing a cheerleaders’ dress, a wig and a pearl necklace.
“What a ridiculous, ridiculous question,” Lee said when asked if he recalled dressing in drag in 1977, “conflating something like that to sexualized entertainment in front of children, which is a very, very serious subject.”
Lee said the drag bill, which comes into effect April 1, would protect children from being “potentially exposed to sexualized entertainment, to obscenity.”
Civil rights groups and drag performers have noted that Tennessee, like other states, already bans obscenity in front of minors, and call the restrictions unconstitutional, vague and redundant.
Modern drag performances, which have long flourished in LGBT venues before becoming a more mainstream entertainment in recent years, typically do not involve nudity.
Performers…
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