Let’s talk about the word drag for a moment, because language matters. To “drag” something is to pull it along, often slowly, often against its will. And that’s exactly what these bills do. They drag Kentucky backward. They drag free expression into the crosshairs of censorship. They drag a lame political argument across House and Senate floors again and again, hoping repetition will make it true.
The term “drag” itself has long been used to describe performance, exaggeration, costume, and play. It’s theater. It’s art. It’s a tradition that predates current culture by decades, if not centuries. It exists in clubs and on stages for the same reason comedy and satire have always existed: to reflect society back to itself, sometimes with humor, sometimes with critique, sometimes with joy.
Yet in the Kentucky General Assembly, drag has become shorthand for something else entirely. Fear. Political posturing. A convenient symbol to rally against when real governing gets hard. Masked in the language of child protection, these bills promise safety but deliver something else entirely: censorship, stigma, and government overreach.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth.
These bills do not address abuse. They do not fund schools. They do not expand healthcare, stabilize families, or reduce violence. What they do is criminalize expression and give the state new authority to decide which performances, identities, and bodies are acceptable in public life.
That should concern everyone, not just people who perform in or attend drag shows.
History offers clear lessons: When lawmakers start policing art and expression, it doesn’t stop with the original target. Drag may be the opening act, but the precedent it sets is the headliner. Once the government claims the power to ban expression it dislikes, it begins to erode freedom, inch by inch, bill by bill.
We can protect children without turning culture into a crime scene. We can have honest conversations about age-appropriate spaces without pretending that drag itself is dangerous. And we can demand better from our leaders than recycled fear dressed up as concern.
Frankfort can be SUCH a drag, because too many lawmakers keep dragging Kentucky into a future built on fearmongering and suspicion, rather than freedom.
Different is not dangerous. Drag is not a crime. But legislating fear? That’s a habit we should break.