Living (and Working) in Hostile States Like Florida and Tennessee While LGBTQ

On April 25, native Floridian Berry Ayers, aka Beneva Fruitville, joined with hundreds of her fellow drag performers for a Drag Queen’s March in Tallahassee, Florida. They were there to protest a plethora of hateful legislation targeting drag shows, trans-affirming medical care and bathroom usage. “It was just a show of resistance versus more trying to get anything changed, because we knew it was going to be signed,” she says.

Ayers was right. The laws were passed and enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis — who signed 2022’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill — and Ayers saw the life she had worked so hard to build in Sarasota for the past 18 years slip away. “All the regular places that I would work were getting scared,” she says. “They were saying, ‘Maybe we just take a little beat and not do your show for a while.’ And that sucked. So I basically lost all my income. I lost my freedom to live in society, and I lost my medical care.”

And so, she made the painful decision to start over in New York. “I left,” says Ayers, who has started a GoFundMe to aid her new life. “I feel like I had to leave. I felt like I had no other choice.”

Across the South, LGBTQIA+ performers and creatives are being forced to contemplate leaving their homes as states including Florida, Tennessee, Texas and Georgia pass bills targeting their community. In April, retired Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade revealed that his family — including daughter Zaya, who is transgender — had relocated from Florida to California for a safer life, even before this new wave of legislation. “The laws, the politics … it’s unsafe conversation, and it’s unsafe for my daughter,” says Wade.

With more than 525 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in 41 states so far in 2023 and more than 75 signed into law (see details on new laws in four states at the end of this story), civil rights group The Human Rights Campaign declared a “national state of emergency” on June 6.

This backlash has come amid decades of progress, with queer creative communities flourishing in growing entertainment hubs like Miami, Austin, Nashville and Atlanta. Many queer artists living in these metropolises have long been wary of venturing out of their liberal enclaves (referred to in Atlanta as “OTP,” or outside the perimeter). This fear has increased in recent years. “I shot a feature last year, and I left the state to shoot because I was like, ‘I don’t feel like I can job it here.’ I didn’t necessarily feel a hundred percent comfortable,” says Austin-based transgender filmmaker Bears Rebecca Fonté. “We were doing a lesbian vampire thriller [Crimson Shadows]. It’s going to be amazing, but that’s something that might, I don’t know, piss somebody off and they might have an open-carry gun.”

The regressive laws also have made queer performers and their allies reluctant to travel to work in certain states. “I’ve had opportunities that were supposed to be shot in some of these states,” says UTA digital agent Pranav Mandavia, who reps comedians Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers and drag stars including Trixie Mattel and Monét X Change. “My clients have passed [on performing in some states] because they’ve … felt uncomfortable physically. So, they’re just not in that mindset right now because it’s an attack on their being, essentially.”

Nashville filmmaker Christin Baker (Christmas at the Ranch) encountered this phenomenon recently. “I did a creative retreat where people came from out of town and were really nervous, and I would have to talk with them and be like, ‘I promise you this is a safe space,’ ” Baker says. “What you see out there is not what you will experience when you come here.”

Nearly all of the artists THR spoke with say that their careers and the entertainment industry as a whole in their cities had yet to be significantly impacted by studios or jobs moving out of their states. Many, like Atlanta-based trans actress and filmmaker Ava Davis, believe this is a good thing. “If you’re pouring money into productions in a state where you have laws being passed, then, in effect, you can change the narrative,” she says. “But if you’re pulling out, then you have no voice in the conversation.”

While some local pride events in Florida have been canceled due to fear of reprisals — and one town, Wilton Manors, amended the permit for its June 17 pride celebration to prevent drag performances on outdoor stages — many queer creative communities and their allies have banded together. Nationally, a “Drag Isn’t Dangerous” telethon on May 7, featuring stars like Charlize Theron and Marcia Gay Harden, raised nearly $600,000 for initiatives like the ACLU’s Drag Defense Fund. Locally, there have been events like Nashville’s Love Rising benefit concert, which protested odious anti-queer and anti-trans bills and featured performers like Maren Morris, Jason Isbell and Allison Russell.

“It’s a terror campaign. It’s a fear campaign,” says Russell, who co-organized the benefit with Isbell. “It’s the age-old fascist tactic of find a scapegoat and whip up a frenzy of fear around this scapegoat. And exactly like Nazi Germany in the early ’30s, the nationalist movements they have started seem to like to target our queer communities first because we’re the most vulnerable.”

“[I brought] my daughter and every other musician brought their kids,” adds Russell of the Love Rising concert. “It wasn’t like we planned it. We just all had that same impetus of no, there’s nowhere safer for our kids in this state right now than in this room at Love Rising where everyone in this room is saying, ‘We are committed to upholding and protecting the equal rights of every single human being in Tennessee, regardless of their gender orientation, of their sexual orientation, of their artistic expression.’ Drag is as old as humanity and all of a sudden we’re demonizing it? So, are we going to outlaw Shakespeare or Mrs. Doubtfire, Tootsie, Kinky Boots? How far are we going?”

Colby Gallahar, a foundation manager at Creative Artist Agency and a Nashville resident, believes the concert helped raise awareness in Tennessee. “I think so many people, my family included … aren’t necessarily aware of what legislation was being passed or what the sentiment towards the LGBT community was at that time,” explains Gallahar. “So, concerts, they’re wonderful and provide the fundraising, but they also create an awareness because you have artists who span demographics, who transcend the political divide.”

So far, it is local drag performers who have been the most impacted by new anti-LGBTQ legislation. “On a national scale, we’re not seeing a tremendous effect, but locally it is having really nasty consequences on some of the people who are least able to pivot,” say UTA comedy touring agent Michael Grinspan, who represents drag stars including Bob the Drag Queen. “If there’s a particular state [my clients] can’t go to, it’s easy for us to just kind of pick up stakes and go somewhere else.”

RuPaul’s Drag Race alum Kameron Michaels, a former Nashville resident who now lives in Las Vegas, sees this affecting many of her former co-workers who perform at clubs in the Tennessee capital. “Drag is a real career now. A lot of these clubs are offering benefits,” Kameron says. “For some of these girls, that’s all they have. And so, when these people are passing laws to try to take that away … this is people’s livelihood.”

As a touring performer, Michaels, who grew up in Tennessee, makes sure to call out oppression wherever she goes. “Every time I go to a venue, I try to look at their local laws. I ask the local performers, ‘Do you guys have a drag ban right now? Do you guys have a trans health care ban?’ ” she says. “Everywhere I go, I try to ask and then I try to say something on the microphone.”

Many performers THR spoke with are determined to stay and fight, even as the political climate worsens in their state. “For the most part, what we’re finding is that there’s a defiance,” says Craig Hardesty, chair of the board of directors of Atlanta’s Out on Film LGBTQ Film Festival. “It’s like, ‘No, we are going to keep creating, we’re going to keep telling our stories. We’re going to stay and do this. This is where we live, you know, this is where we work. And this is our community.’ “

Austin-based filmmaker PJ Raval (Call Her Ganda) agrees. “If this is where change needs to happen, well then, this is where people like me need to be. We need to be working here. We need to be active in terms of participating in what the community looks like.”

For many Southern-born performers, there is a sense of brave obligation — they are staying to create art that will inspire and educate their people. “The only movies I make are lesbian-led, queer-led,” says Baker. “I think it’s incredibly important that people know gay people live in rural Southern cities — it’s not a big-city phenomenon.” And then there’s the sense of fellowship: “One of the main reasons why I am staying is because I do love the camaraderie of the South,” says Atlanta-based Leo Hollen Jr., an actor and filmmaker (Queer Moxie). “The queer creative community here, they see you, they know you. They’re going to say hi, they’re going to give you a hug, they’re going to help you out any way they can.”

There is a real sense of sadness, however, that comes through in speaking with many of these creators who believe these new bills are not the will of the people but rather the result of extreme gerrymandering that has given Republican-led state legislatures unchecked power. The real-life impact of these new and possibly additional laws mean that at some point they may have to reconsider their future.

In Austin, Fonté is anxiously watching the progress of Texas bill SB 1029 (which so far has passed the state Senate). The proposed legislation would make it very difficult for doctors to give trans-affirming care to adult patients. “My wife and I were talking about it,” Fonté says. ” ‘Well, what are we going to do about this? We can’t live somewhere where I can’t get medical care.’ And so, the solution that I was toying with was that maybe I need to get an apartment in Los Angeles and just fly out once every couple of months to see my doctor and get my prescriptions filled. But how ridiculous is that?”

And although Fonté feels safely cocooned in Austin, she knows that the city’s progressive government cannot protect her. “It’s really sad because Austin is a great town, and I feel like Austin obviously is not in favor of any of these things. But Austin not only has no control, the government is actively trying to give it less control. They’re trying to take some decisions away from the City Council just because they hate Austin so much.”

These realities have led some queer artists to realize that it’s time to go. “My wife and I just put our house on the market,” says musician and filmmaker Janelle Faimen, who has lived in Nashville for 17 years. “I’ve been ready to get out for a while. But this current legislation was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We were like, ‘No, we’re not doing it.’ We’re not going to stay and fight. We’ve done that. We’re both very active politically. And to be honest, if we just look at Florida, we can see what’s coming.”

Added to Tennessee’s anti-trans and anti-queer legislation is the state’s draconian anti-abortion law. That’s not the climate the couple want for their family. But most of all, they are weary. “Honestly, being a member of the community that goes to protest, my wife being on the board of The Pride Chamber — we’re tired,” says Faimen. “It feels like you’re fighting a giant, which you are. It’s hard to constantly fight for something that, for the last decade, we kind of took for granted.”

Nearly everyone THR spoke with had friends and colleagues who were planning to move — if they haven’t already. In Miami, an anonymous couple who work in media shared a similar story as they planned to move to Washington, D.C. “It’s hard because we’ve built a community in a sense,” the couple said by email. “We have our friends, we have our family. So it’s hard to leave all of that behind.”

The two are considering renting their home in order to hold on to it, admitting, “Really it’s just more of a wishful thinking — that maybe one day we’ll be able to come back.”

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New Anti-LGBTQ Legislation in Four States

FLORIDA

The state expanded its “Don’t Say Gay” law (which bans discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools) to all grades. It also passed bills banning minors from attending drag shows and prohibiting Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care.

TEXAS

On June 2, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill to prevent gender-affirming care for minors. Currently, legislators are pushing a bill similar to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. The state had previously banned transgender individuals from girls sports in schools in 2021.

GEORGIA

In March, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law that prohibits doctors from performing surgery or prescribing hormones for trans minors. It still allows prescriptions for puberty blockers. A bill similar to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, however, stalled in the state Senate.

TENNESSEE

Gov. Bill Lee signed a law that bans performances on public property featuring “male or female impersonators.” On June 3, a federal judge declared it unconstitutional. The state has also banned gender-affirming health care for trans youth.

This story first appeared in the June 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.