Amid the outrage, Florida GOP chief Christian Ziegler confronted pushback after he intimated {that a} huge police intervention must be known as in to cease the present, “A Drag Queen Christmas,” which wrapped up its nationwide tour with an occasion in Clearwater, Florida, final week.
Ziegler, vice chair of the Florida Republican Party, stated on social media that the suitable regulation enforcement response to the present would eclipse the pressure used throughout an FBI raid of Republican operative Roger Stone’s house. “[Stone] acquired ARs at his entrance door,” Ziegler tweeted December 28, referring to brokers who approached Stone’s property with rifles in 2019. “I anticipate no less than that – TIMES 10 – in response to this insane occasion.”
While some social media customers took Ziegler’s remark as an incitement to violence, the GOP vice chair maintains he was not encouraging drag present detractors to take up arms.
“It’s not a risk,” Ziegler says.”It’s advocating for regulation enforcement response to this occasion that had youngsters uncovered to sexually graphic and specific materials.”
Maxx Fenning, president of the South Florida-based LGBTQ advocacy group PRISM, says that Ziegler’s feedback posed a hazard to the drag and LGBTQ communities, no matter what his intentions have been.
“Whether he meant it that means or not, I believe that somebody like him ought to perceive the context that we’re in, ought to perceive the responses that we have already seen to tug performances this yr, and acknowledge fairly plainly what language like that may inevitably result in,” Fenning tells New Times.
Ziegler’s feedback hit a nerve among the many LGBTQ neighborhood and past, in mild of the wave of violence and vitriol in opposition to drag exhibits and LGBTQ venues over the previous yr. The LGBTQ group GLAAD has documented a number of violent threats and extremist responses tied to tug exhibits, starting from bomb threats to an act of arson at a Tulsa enterprise that had hosted a drag occasion.
Ziegler made the feedback on the night time of A Drag Queen Christmas’ Orlando tour cease, which he sharply criticized for permitting youngsters within the viewers. The occasion was a part of a 36-city tour that includes standard drag performers singing, dancing, and doing risque holiday-themed comedy.
The present stopped in Broward, Miami, Orlando, and Clearwater over a four-day interval in its remaining run of the tour, which ended December 29. Venues in these cities imposed various age-related attendance restrictions on the present, with the Broward Center for the Performing Arts requiring minors to be accompanied by adults. The Clearwater venue prohibited attendees below the age of 18.
When requested to make clear his tweet, Ziegler claims his assertion was misunderstood and that he was making an attempt to attract consideration to the dimensions of the 2019 FBI raid of Stone’s Fort Lauderdale house in reference to prices of witness-tampering and mendacity to Congress.
“I imply, I’m not a giant fan of Roger Stone,” Ziegler tells New Times. “But if you acquired a 60-year-old being greeted at his doorstep by regulation enforcement with rifles, I imply, that is ridiculous. And I believe [my tweet] was simply highlighting that, but additionally that possibly regulation enforcement must be targeted on this stuff.”
In the ultimate days of A Drag Queen Christmas’ tour, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) despatched warning letters to the James L. Knight Center in Miami and the Plaza Live in Orlando, threatening to file administrative complaints in opposition to them in the event that they allowed youngsters to attend the present.
Earlier within the week, DBPR opened an investigation into the Broward Center for Performing Arts, claiming it had obtained complaints of kids viewing specific content material through the present. In response, the Broward Center issued an announcement, sustaining that it had warned of the adult-themed humor nicely upfront and highlighting the way it required minors on the present to be accompanied by mother and father.
Fenning says it has been alarming to look at what is supposed to be leisure flip right into a flashpoint. He says drag is a key LGBTQ artwork type and has offered a way of neighborhood to LGBTQ folks for many years.
“I fear that that is an assault in opposition to our neighborhood in a special sense… in opposition to the very cloth of our neighborhood in a means that I believe is I believe is extraordinarily harmful,” Fenning says.
Ziegler and his spouse, Bridget Ziegler, are distinguished figures in native and state Republican politics. Christian Ziegler runs the consulting agency Microtargeted Media and was a vocal assist of Governor Ron DeSantis’ reelection marketing campaign this yr. Bridget Ziegler, who has served on the Sarasota County School Board since 2014, was one of many founders of Moms for Liberty, a conservative group that has pushed for the removing of public college books that it deems to be sexually specific.
Ziegler joins a refrain of conservative figures who’ve known as for arrests and police intervention in reference to drag exhibits attended by youngsters.
This previous summer time, after video surfaced of a kid being led via Miami restaurant R House by a drag performer in pasties, commentator Lauren Chen proclaimed, “These folks belong in jail.” She added, “Ron DeSantis, I’m you.”
Days later, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation filed an administrative grievance looking for to revoke R House’s liquor license, claiming it had uncovered youngsters to sexually specific conduct.