Governor DeSantis is teaching the nation that “parental rights” are limited. They are respected only when you agree with his ideology. For example, he hates anything related to gay people. He especially hates drag queens. So, parents do not have the right to take their children to a drag queen show, even if the show has zero sexual content. This is peculiar behavior for a short guy who wears white go-go boots to tour hurricane damage.
DeSantis is cracking down on drag queen performances. How dare parents exercise their “parental rights!”
The Orlando Sentinel reported:
The Orlando Philharmonic has settled with state regulators over its “A Drag Queen Christmas” show, agreeing to pay a $5,000 fine and to not allow children into such performances in the future.
The settlement, reached in August but only publicly announced Wednesday, came even though undercover agents reported that they found nothing lewd about the event.
The Plaza Live, owned by the Philharmonic, could have had its alcohol license revoked in the wake of the complaint filed in February by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation over the Dec. 28 show at the theater.
The agency claimed The Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation, which oversees the Plaza Live, had a responsibility under Florida statutes to make sure no minors were in attendance for the show which allegedly featured “simulated sex acts.”
There was a sign at the entrance warning of potentially unsuitable content for those under the age of 18, according to the complaint.
While undercover agents took photos of three minors at the show, all apparently accompanied by adults, an incident report obtained by the Miami Herald stated that nothing indecent had happened on stage.
The Philharmonic admitted no liability by settling the dispute and agreed not to permit minors into such shows. The Philharmonic and state agency also waived all claims against each other.
A spokesperson for the Philharmonic did not respond to requests for comment on the agreement or whether the event would be held this year. No such show was listed on the calendar on the Plaza Live website on Thursday.
In Miami, the city-owned James L. Knight Center agreed to a similar $5,000 fine for a Drag Queen Christmas event the day before the Orlando show. That settlement did not find any violations of administrative or criminal laws, the Herald reported.
The show toured several Florida cities including Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Clearwater in December 2022. The Orlando show drew in large crowds of supporters who backed parents’ rights to take their children where they wish and to protest the conservative movement’s attacks on the LGBTQ community.
The show also drew protesters who claimed it exposed children to “sexually explicit” content and accused organizers of “grooming,” an allegation often baselessly directed at LGBTQ people to suggest a link between them and child abuse.
A later law criminalizing “knowingly” admitting children to “adult” live performances, signed earlier this year by Gov. Ron DeSantis, was temporarily blocked from taking effect in July by a judge who ruled that it targeted drag show performers’ free speech rights. The ongoing suit was brought by Orlando restaurant Hamburger Mary’s.
I sent a gift of $50 to the Orlando Philharmonic to thank them for defending freedom of expression. If 99 others do the same, we can make up the ridiculous fine they were forced to pay to pander to DeSantis’s homophobia.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Settling this case does not strike me as any defense of the First Amendment.
Bending the knee, more like.
Thugs and conmen shake down their marks. ‘Tis nothing more.
“simulated sex acts.”
Hmmmm. . . . . I wonder how those are defined?
“. . . for a short guy who wears white go-go boots to tour. . . .”
C’mon now Diane let’s not diss on short people who like to dress up. 😉
Duane,
I didn’t mention that he wears lifts in his boots to make him look taller. I know, that’s “lookism,” but what the heck
I thought that Rhonda Santis’s Go-Go boots were simply FABULOUS.
DeSantis enjoys cracking the whip, just because he can. He is a power hungry, control freak. The Orlando Philharmonic must bow, scrape, kiss the ring and pay a fine.
Control freak
Exactly
Undercover agents took photos!
Really?
Florida has become the Fourth Reich for the 21st century, an imperfect environment to raise children where they can’t see drag shows but may be murdered in their classrooms by machine gun tottling MAGA lunatics that voted for DeRanged DeSantis and Traitor Trump.
https://www.theledger.com/story/news/crime/2023/01/31/florida-mass-shootings-lakeland-fl-2023/69857845007/
I think those undercover agents have better things to do than sneak into a drag show and take photos of underage children with their parents.
Something some of Hitler’s undercover agents did before and during WWII during the Nazi campaign against LGBTQ victims.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-research-reveals-how-the-nazis-targeted-transgender-people-180982931/
I picture it going down a bit like this —
xoxoxoxoxo!!!
America has an insecure men problem. Deeply insecure men compensate for their shortcomings (sometimes literal “short” comings) by seeking power and the adulation of followers (and sometimes wearing lifts in their cowboy boots). And that insecurity causes them to gravitate toward politics, where they can get those things and spend their adult lives in a childishly macho swagger (think little boys playing Army), acting out vindictively against “the other” (anything and anyone not like them), and attacking anyone too defenseless to fight back (poor people, children, the elderly, the infirm, women without power, LGBTQX people, immigrants, foreigners, people with differing religious beliefs). Sometimes, as with Trump, how the politician got to be so insecure is clear enough. Trump had a father whom he could never please, never be good enough for, one who physically abused him and verbally denigrated him again and again. And this made him the monster of malignant narcissism and moral blindness that he is today. At other times, the early dysfunction isn’t widely understood. But it’s doubtless there. One wonders what the backstory is. Guess what? You aren’t going to read it in the ghost-written campaign-adjacent books published with these people’s names on them.
Here’s the really sad thing: shockingly, horrifically, large numbers of Americans find the very swagger and vindictiveness and hatefulness resulting from that early family dysfunction appealing. It’s macho. It’s “leadership.” It’s being tough, being a man’s man.
Uh, no. It’s being an angry, wounded, insecure but spoiled toddler who hasn’t gotten his way.