'We won. Love always wins.' Texas queens celebrate end of SB-12 'drag ban' at ACL Fest
On the final Sunday of the 2023 Austin City Limits Music Festival, the bedazzled queens of Extragrams transformed a shady grove of trees in Zilker Park into a glittery disco hideaway. With stellar lip syncs, jaw-dropping tricks and sequins for days, the sovereigns came to slay.
They also came to celebrate.
On September 26, 10 days before the “Star Wars” theme music ushered in the first day of the festival, a federal judge in Houston instituted a permanent injunction against a law that could have banned many drag performances in Texas. Senate Bill 12, signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in June, created civil and criminal penalties for anyone involved with "sexually oriented performances" in front of minors. The law was ruled unconstitutional due to freedom of speech concerns.
The day after the ruling, ACL Fest organizers called Keri Lynn, owner of Extragrams and one of the plaintiffs who joined the ACLU in a lawsuit against the state. When they asked if she wanted to host a royal court at Austin’s biggest festival, the answer was an easy, “Hell, yes,” she said.
At the top of the show, emcee Nadine Hughes noted that the show had to be booked last minute because “it was going to be illegal for us to be here.”
“You know what, we rose to it. We overcame,” she said.
The crowd cheered wildly.
'It's been crazy and scary to even be a drag queen'
SB-12 didn’t specifically mention drag performances, but for Kerry Lynn, it was a heartbreaking “attack on drag and on our business,” she said.
“SB 12 is a very vague law, and it was hard for people who want to have drag, host drag, hire drag to be able to navigate it,” Lynn said.
Lynn founded Extragrams during the height of pandemic shutdowns. Built around the idea of a singing telegram (but extra), the company grew organically into a drag entertainment delivery service. Her business brings “the joy of drag to people in new spaces all the time,” she said.
“It's always met with positivity and, you know, wild curiosity.”
In the wake of the bill’s passage and the furor it provoked, Lynn had to develop new safety protocols and policies to protect her queens.
Tension, one of the queens who performed on the Extragrams set, spent the year second guessing herself onstage, she said after the performance.
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“It made me a lot more nervous about what we were doing and who might show up,” she said.It was a struggle to “fight that thought when trying to just do something that we love that we know is fun, and it makes people happy.”
Because of safety concerns, the queens we spoke to for this story chose to be identified by their stage names.
“It's been crazy and scary to even be a drag queen. I mean, just to walk the streets,” Aria Rey, another performer, said. “It's such a blessing to be able to break through all of that hardness and trauma from this whole year.”
“It's our form of speech, it's our form of expression,” Justice, another member of the Extragrams troupe, said. “It was an attack on our First Amendment rights. And so it feels really profound that even in really divisive times, that our freedom of speech has been protected.”
'To have visibility gives people hope'
Performing at ACL Fest was a giddy experience for the Extragrams gals.
“The adrenaline that was running through my body. It was a little crazy,” Monica Monae Davenport, another queen, said after the show.
“It was so exhilarating. The crowd was amazing, The audience was great, it was so much fun to feed off of everybody,” Tension said.
But this show was about more than death drops and lip syncs. LGBTQ+ advocates believe all ages drag shows are important because they create a climate of inclusivity for the next generation. To let the public “know that there's nothing wrong with what we do and to have visibility gives people hope,” Tension said.
“To be able to see something like myself, or any of us, as a kid would have been a monumental thing in my life,” she said.
“I think it's really important for children to be able to see queer people express themselves how they are,” Aria Rey said.
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She grew up Mormon, very sheltered from queer culture. She learned about drag when she was 18, and as soon as she left high school immersed herself in the lifestyle and never looked back.
“If I was exposed to something like this when I was a kid, I feel like it would have changed my life so much. All I had was Lady Gaga and Beyonce to look up to,” she said.
‘Love always wins’
The legal battles of the past year inflamed an anti-drag narrative around the state, Kerry Lynn said.
Drag queens have faced “a lot of pushback and a lot of heat and a lot of scary things,” she said. Clubs and promoters have been apprehensive about booking drag.
To have ACL Fest “embrace us. And (bring us) back again, during these times, it just felt so celebratory,” she said.
“Diversity is in ACL Fest’s DNA, and inviting the drag queens to perform on the Bonus Tracks stage is always a treat as we know they will bring joy and a wonderful vibe to the festival,” ACL Fest organizers said in a statement after the festival. “With so much going on in the world, they remind us to live in the moment and celebrate each day. It’s an honor to have them on the ACL Fest lineup.”
“We did it. We won. Love always wins,” Aria Rey said.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin's Extragrams drag queens celebrated queer joy, end of SB-12
