Tennessee residents have raised thousands-of-dollars for a massive electronic billboard showcasing the state’s Governor Bill Lee dressed as a woman in the wake of a bill that criminalized drag shows.
Using TikTok and GoFundMe, Zachary Heath Stamper of Bristol raised $61,395, as of Saturday and plans to spend some of it on the billboard in downtown Nashville as well as others around the city.
Stamper hopes the billboard will be on Lee’s route home and when he goes to church and said that he has also enlisted Tennessee drag fun to participate in the project.
In a video posted to TikTok Stamper said that he’s scouting possible sites aboard Nashville’s Big Drag Bus, one of the most popular party buses in a city known for them.
Tennessee residents have raised thousands-of-dollars for a massive electronic billboard showcasing the state’s Governor Bill Lee dressed as a woman in the wake of a bill that criminalized drag shows
The picture was taken for the 1977 yearbook from the annual ‘powderpuff’ event at Franklin High, in which girls dressed like boys and boys dressed like girls
‘Those drag queens are going to be on there with us as we go around picking out billboards,’ he said.
The huge electronic billboard on the route to Lee’s church will have the added benefit of a bible verse, Stamper explained.
Photos of the governor dressed in a short skirt and pears as a teenager in 1977 emerged after drag shows and transgender medical intervention for minors were banned in the state.
The picture was taken for the 1977 yearbook from the annual ‘powderpuff’ event at Franklin High, in which girls dressed like boys and boys dressed like girls.
Powderpuff events are common in high schools in the South, and Lee told reporters on Tuesday that it is ‘ridiculous’ to compare them to the drag shows.
Stamper first saw the cross-dressing governor photo on TikTok – the photo was discovered by a website called The Tennessee Holler.
‘Everybody kept posting we should put this on a billboard,’ he recalled. ‘I said, ‘If y’all all want to do that…’
He set up a GoFundMe page on Tuesday morning that had collected more than $1,500 within hours and by Wednesday Stamper woke up to $22,000 for the billboard cause, with sums continuing to rise.
‘I woke up Wednesday and it was $22,000,’ he said. ‘I just couldn’t believe it.’
The project is hoped to highlight the claimed hypocrisy of the governor who has claimed he passed the controversial laws to protect children in the state.
Using TikTok and GoFundMe, Zachary Heath Stamper of Bristol raised $61,395, as of Saturday and plans to spend some of it on the billboard in downtown Nashville as well as others around the city
Lee’s press secretary, Jade Byers, released a statement about the new law saying it ‘specifically protects children from obscene, sexualized entertainment.’
‘Any attempt to conflate this serious issue with lighthearted school traditions is dishonest and disrespectful to Tennessee families.’
Before the billboard campaign, Stamper launched a non-profit for foster kids citing that there are about 8,991 children without homes refuting the governor’s concern for the state’s youth.
‘We got kids sleeping on DCS floors and all [Lee] is worried about is banning drag shows,’ Stamper said.
‘Why are you spending all your time on this instead of foster care?’
Lee has signed a bill banning drag shows in public spaces, a measure that will likely force drag shows underground in Tennessee.
Other states across the country are proposing similar legislation.
Lee gave his signature just hours after the measure passed in the Senate Thursday afternoon.
In the same sitting, Lee signed a ban on gender-affirming health care for youth in the state.
The move means there is a total ban on all gender-affirming health care for kids in the state – including puberty blockers and hormone treatments.
The new medical legislation, which was fast-tracked by the Republican majority in the state, will take full effect this summer.
This means that any children in Tennessee who are currently on gender-affirming medication will have until March 31, 2024, to come off them.
The law, signed on Thursday, was written to ban medical treatment for the diagnosis of gender dysphoria – rather than prohibiting a particular drug or medication itself.
Lee has signed a bill banning drag shows in public spaces, a measure that will likely force drag shows underground in Tennessee
Gov Lee signed the bill, moving in into legislature, despite harsh criticisms and threats to sue from the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Lee signed off on the legislation without issuing a statement or in a public ceremony.
In the weeks leading up to the law being signed, opinions on both sides were heard.
House Majority Leader William Lamberth argued that minors lack the maturity to make ‘life-altering’ medical decisions like taking gender affirming medication.
He said: ‘These treatments and procedures have a lifetime of negative consequences that are irreversible.’
It comes as the debate over the rights of America’s transgender people intensifies this year, with scores of Republican-led bills aimed at banning puberty blockers in front of state legislatures.
Some 100 bills have been proposed across 27 states aimed at stopping children from accessing hormone blocking drugs and other types of ‘gender-affirming care’, according to several groups and politicians who monitor the issue.
Other draft laws being debated in state legislatures cover everything from which pronouns can be used in classrooms, whether trans girls can play in trans sports teams and if trans people must use bathrooms that correspond to their birth sex.
Drag artist Vidalia Anne Gentry spoke out during a news conference held by the Human Rights Campaign to draw attention to anti-drag bills in the Tennessee legislature
They are being debated as trans people complain about battling prejudice in a fight for their survival, while parents of trans-identifying teens bemoan their kids being indoctrinated by online ideologues, some even encouraged by their teachers.
The Governors of South Dakota and Utah have already signed into law bans on trans procedures for kids that lawmakers approved earlier this year. Bills in Idaho, Missouri, Wyoming, and Texas seek to do the same.
Tennessee signed it into law on Thursday, March 3, 2023.
The bills are often opposed by Democrats. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre this week slammed the ‘450 and counting anti-LGBTQI+ bills’ as ‘cheap shots’ that would hurt a vulnerable group.
In numbers: the explosion of children seeking gender care
The US has seen an explosion in recent years in the number of children who identify as a gender different from what they were designated at birth. Thousands of families are weighing profound choices in an emerging field of medicine as they pursue what is called gender-affirming care for their children.
The spotlight fell on trans-identifying Sunny Bryant, 8, when Texas lawmakers declared illegal the hormone treatments she was planning to take upon reaching adolescence
In 2021, about 42,000 children and teens across the United States received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, nearly triple the number in 2017, according to data Komodo Health, a technology company, compiled for Reuters. Gender dysphoria is defined as the distress caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and the one assigned to them at birth.
Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021. Reuters found similar trends when it requested state-level data on diagnoses among children covered by Medicaid, the public insurance program for lower-income families.
Gender-affirming care covers a spectrum of interventions. It can entail adopting a child’s preferred name and pronouns and letting them dress in alignment with their gender identity — called social transitioning.
It can incorporate therapy or other forms of psychological treatment. And, from around the start of adolescence, it can include medical interventions such as puberty blockers, hormones and, in some cases, surgery. In all of it, the aim is to support and affirm the child’s gender identity.
These medical treatments don’t begin until the onset of puberty, typically around age 10 or 11.
But families that go the medical route venture onto uncertain ground, where science has yet to catch up with practice. While the number of gender clinics treating children in the US has grown from zero to more than 100 in the past 15 years — and waiting lists are long — strong evidence of the efficacy and possible long-term consequences of that treatment remains scant.
Puberty blockers and sex hormones do not have US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for children’s gender care. No clinical trials have established their safety for such off-label use. The drugs’ long-term effects on fertility and sexual function remain unclear.
New Yorkers took to the streets of Manhattan to participate in the Reclaim Pride Coalition’s (RPC) fourth annual Queer Liberation March, which in June focussed on transgender rights among other issues
And in 2016, the FDA ordered makers of puberty blockers to add a warning about psychiatric problems to the drugs’ label after the agency received several reports of suicidal thoughts in children who were taking them.
More broadly, no large-scale studies have tracked people who received gender-related medical care as children to determine how many remained satisfied with their treatment as they aged and how many eventually regretted transitioning. The same lack of clarity holds true for the contentious issue of detransitioning, when a patient stops or reverses the transition process.
The National Institutes of Health, the US government agency responsible for medical and public health research, told Reuters that ‘the evidence is limited on whether these treatments pose short- or long-term health risks for transgender and other gender-diverse adolescents.’
The NIH has funded a comprehensive study to examine mental health and other outcomes for about 400 transgender youths treated at four US children’s hospitals. However, long-term results are years away and may not address concerns such as fertility or cognitive development.
— By Reuters
