Author of Texas anti-drag show bill explains video of himself in a dress
In a video that was posted to social media this week, the Texas lawmaker who authored a bill that would restrict drag shows can be seen as a teenager wearing a dress and feathered masquerade mask and skipping through a park.
State Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-fort Worth, acknowledged that he’s indeed in the video that was making the rounds on Tiktok and Twitter, but said it was a “joke back in school for a theater project” and a dare from a friend.
“Nate Schatzline has made his entire personality attacking the LGBTQ community, trans, especially children, and vowed to ban drag shows in Texas,” wrote Michelle Davis, a Twitter user who posted the video and who writes a left-wing blog. “Here is Nate … in drag.”
Schatzline, a former pastor who is in his first term in the Texas House, said there is nothing hypocritical about it.
“Y’all really going crazy over me wearing a dress as a joke back in school for a theatre project? Yah, that’s not a sexually explicit drag show … lol y’all will twist ANYTHING,” he wrote in a tweeted response late Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Schatzline issued a video statement on Twitter.
“The left wing is attacking me for some class project I did as a teenager where my buddies dared me to wear a dress,” he said in the video. “But we’re not going to let it distract us from the real message of what we’re trying to get done here in the Texas Legislature, which is to ban sexually explicit drag shows and preserve the innocence of the next generation.”
His bill, House Bill 1266, would classify any business that hosts a drag show as a sexually oriented business, which under state law would block anyone under 18 from attending and also subject business owners to a $5 tax per customer. Similar bills by other Republican lawmakers have been referred to committee, but his bill has not.
The bill is one of at least 98 anti-lgbt bills filed this legislative session, according to advocacy group Equality Texas’ bill tracker, in keeping with a national trend. Drag shows in particular have elicited protests in Texas in which tensions run high and often demonstrators are armed.
Davis, who posted the video of Schatzline, said the video was sent to her by someone else, and she felt it was important to share because “it’s hypocritical, not only that, but it’s harming the LGBTQ community. And I’m not OK with that.”
“Drag events, like story time, are not sexual,” Davis said. “Drag shows have been around since Shakespeare, it’s a performance.
Just like what Nate did was a performance. What Nate said, how he framed it, is based on his own bigotry and intolerance.”
A similar situation unraveled this week in Tennessee when a photo of that state’s Gov. Bill Lee wearing a dress came out online within the same week that he committed to signing legislation that would ban “adult cabaret entertainment” that is “harmful to minors” from public property, the Associated Press reported. Lee called the comparisons “ridiculous” and said they were “conflating” it with “sexualized entertainment in front of children, which is a very serious question.”