The U.S. has seen a significant spike in anti-LGBTQ bills over the past several years. Currently, the ACLU is tracking 426 anti-LGBTQ bills across the country—34 of which originate from Missouri. Among the state’s proposed pieces of legislation are bills that could prevent transgender athletes from playing on girls sports teams, endanger access to gender-affirming care, limit the ability to update gender information on forms of identification, and ban public drag performances.
“I’m a 62-year-old trans woman, and there’s a bill out there that says that I would not be allowed, even as an adult, to have gender-affirming care,” says Jordan Braxton, Pride St. Louis’ director of diversity, inclusion, and outreach. “Also that any person born in Missouri cannot get their gender marker on their birth certificate changed. They’re trying to make it very difficult for trans people to live as their authentic selves.”
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In solidarity with St. Louis’ queer community, It’s All Drag, an ad-hoc group including Braxton and three other local activists, will be holding a march this Saturday, March 25 at 6 p.m. The event’s additional organizers are LGBTQ bar Prism owners Sean Abernathy and Jade Sinclair, as well as Riverfront Times society columnist Chris Andoe. Mayor Tishuara Jones also plans to attend the march’s closing ceremony.
Participants should plan to gather outside of Rehab STL and make their way through The Grove, ending at Prism. According to a press release, attendees are encouraged to wear “anything that could get them arrested under the ill-defined new drag bans around the country.”
“It’s going be a peaceful march,” Braxton says. “We want to show people that we stand in solidarity with our community—our drag community and our trans community. There are also trans people who do drag. We want to show that we’re here to support them and that it’s not okay to back down.”
The action comes just over a month after the Missouri House of Representatives held public hearings for HB 494 and HB 498, two bills targeting drag performers. In partnership with statewide LGBTQ advocacy organization PROMO, activists and performers Braxton, Maxi Glamour, and Akasha Royale traveled to Jefferson City to speak out against the legislation.
When Braxton asked who had co-signed the bills, she says she was surprised to hear it was representative Chris Sander—someone she’s known for about 18 years. “I was dumbfounded,” Braxton says. “Someone that I knew, who had been to drag shows and tipped me, was now sponsoring an anti-drag bill.”
After both Braxton and Royale spoke separately with Sander, Braxton says Sander agreed to withdraw his support. When the hearing began at 1:30 a.m., no members of the public had appeared to speak in the bill’s favor.
“Then they opened the floor up for people to oppose the bill, and there were about 40 of us there,” Braxton says. “I even said in my testimony, ‘The person who sponsored this bill took his name off, and there’s no one here to support this bill. So what does that tell you about this bill? That it’s frivolous and needs to not go any further.’ Well, since then, the bill has died.”
Still, Braxton says, the fight isn’t over—the bills are likely to resurface at some point. To Glamour, what they saw in Jefferson City is representative of a concerning nationwide trend.
“There’s a network of regressive, harmful people working together across this country,” Glamour says. “They choose some of the more regressive states to introduce these policies to see if they can push it up to the Supreme Court. They really want to eradicate transness and queerness.”
Glamour believes that transphobic rhetoric must be addressed at a policy level and from both outside and inside the queer community. With new anti-LGBTQ legislation constantly being introduced, they wish it was feasible to travel to Jefferson City every week.
At this Saturday’s march, Braxton, Glamour, and Royale will each be presented an ICON award by Out in STL for their recent advocacy work. Braxton wants the event to send the message that queer people deserve to live as who they truly are.
“Sometimes, I don’t think legislators who are opposed to trans people actually know that trans people are human beings,” Braxton says. “That’s why I always end my speeches with, ‘Above all, you have to remember that trans people are human beings. And trans rights are human rights.’ Because that’s what it is—all we want to do is live our lives like everyone else’s, and have the same rights.”
