All of Aggieland Sued Over Drag Queens

AMARILLO, TX — San Angolan Randy Brooks ‘86, who sits on the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, was sued late last month, along with the eight other regents because West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler would not allow a drag queen show to proceed on the campus in Canyon. West Texas A&M (WT) is part of the Texas A&M University System.

Wendler sent an email on March 20 to all of WT’s students, faculty, and staff announcing that West Texas A&M “will not host a drag show on campus.” Wendler argued that drag queen shows are “divisive and demoralizing misogyny” that portray women as merely objects, and “stereotype women in cartoon-like extremes for the amusement of others and discriminate against womanhood.” The drag queen show was scheduled to happen March 31 on the WT campus before Wendler canceled it.

Wendler’s email can be viewed in its entirety here.

The drag show was relocated to a city park in Amarillo following Wendler’s cancellation. Attorneys representing the drag queen show organizers attempted to obtain a temporary restraining order to force Wendler to allow the drag queen show on campus but withdrew their request a day prior to the event.

Event organizers said the drag queen show was a fundraiser for the Trevor Project, a non-profit that claims it is preventing suicide among LGBTQ people. The drag queen show organizers told the Amarillo newspaper that the relocated event in Amarillo raised $10,000 for the non-profit. The conservative Texas Scorecard argued the Trevor Project’s mission was not necessarily or aimed exclusively at preventing suicide, reporting that:

“Sam Brinton—a self-identified nonbinary drag queen who was recently hired, then fired, as the Biden administration’s deputy secretary of nuclear waste—worked at The Trevor Project for four years and bragged about participating in kink relationships with men who pretend to be dogs.” More here.

The Trevor Project also organizes an ongoing online chat group — TrevorSpace — for LGBTQ young people, aged 13-24, with over 400,000 members. Trevor’s stated goal is to create an LGBTQ-affirming space but critics call it a creepy hook-up service.

“Last year, a mom looking for help for her child said she discovered a ‘Pandora’s box’ of inappropriate content in The Trevor Project’s chat room—including adults pushing kids towards gender transitions, giving advice on how to hide transitions from parents, and describing sex acts and fetishes,” Scorecard reported.

Regardless of the validity of the claims about the benefiter of the relocated drag queen show, the lawsuit was filed in the Federal Northern District Court in Amarillo on March 24 and a slew of filings followed up and until the request to force WT to host the drag queen show was withdrawn by the plaintiffs.

The group who represents a plaintiff at WT and filed the lawsuit is called the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE. The non-profit is similar to the American Civil Liberties Union where it locates causes to litigate under the guise of defending free speech expression and freedom of religion.

For example, the organization states on its website that religious liberty is defined as the right to follow the faith of your choice — “or no faith at all.” The Right argues that defending those “with no faith at all” has been accomplished over the past 60 years at the expense of harming many others’ right to worship in public. This wording on religious liberty coupled with defending drag queen show organizers at WT leads many to assume FIRE is a leftist advocacy group. FIRE claims otherwise. In a Politico piece published in June 2022, FIRE claimed it defended a student who was punished for questioning China’s involvement in COVID-19 and juxtaposed that against defending a student ordered to take down a Black Lives Matter banner in her dorm room.

According to the Politico article, FIRE claimed it has received criticism from the Left for its purist view on free speech even while some on the Left claim this has led to the onslaught of what the Left claims is “disinformation” being propagated on the Internet and through social media. On the other hand, on its website, the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation claims FIRE as a major recipient of its grants. Hefner, who died in 2017, was a pornographer and founder of Playboy. He was definitely not a MAGA Republican.

The lawsuit against WT seeks to stop Wendler’s attempt to censor students, according to FIRE. The lawsuit is asking for damages for violating the students’ First Amendment rights.

Named in the lawsuit are Wendler, Christopher Thomas, vice president of student affairs at WT, TAMUS Chancellor John Sharp, all of the TAMUS regents. The lawsuit claimed that the chancellor and regents of TAMUS did not intervene to prevent the violation of the First Amendment rights of WT students by the WT president.

The judge presiding over the case is Federal District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee. He was once deputy counsel for the First Liberty Institute, the Plano-based conservative Christian law firm. In June 2015, he penned an editorial in the National Catholic Register against legalizing homosexual marriage.

The lawsuit battle is a signature fight for FIRE, an organization that believes free speech is paramount regardless of the consequences (which are, in Wendler’s view, misogyny). Allowing drag queen show on a public university campus is also not supported by some WT students, alumni, and people who oppose drag queen shows in general. A petition online supporting Wendler and the ban has gathered 5,918 supporters. On the other hand, those supporting the drag queen show have more than double that amount of supporters. On Change.org, pro-drag queen show supporters number 13,555.

At Angelo State University, this would be the seventh year for its annual Drag Rave, a drag queen show. No one at Angelo State will tell us when the 7th Annual Drag Rave is scheduled and there is no sign of it on the online university calendar. However, the annual Drag Rave is among the top five events out of many and receives special mention on the home page of the ASU University Center Program Council (UCPC).

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