Jun. 12—A drag performance at last year’s Middletown Pride festival was cited last week in support of an Ohio GOP proposal to outlaw what some consider obscene public performances, and Butler County Auditor Nancy Nix offered testimony in support of the bill.

The Middletown Pride committee — which plans a similar event June 21 — responded Tuesday with a statement and invited Nix to attend “to see this year’s show for herself so she may base her future opinions on fact not fantasy.”

The bill is molded by two drag shows in Ohio, including last year’s performance at Middletown Pride, which elicited disgust and frustration from many Ohio Republicans. Nix said the local event “robbed children of their innocence.”

In written testimony, Nix focused on parts of the Middletown performance that featured performers gyrating, bent over or otherwise being “intentionally provocative in indescribable ways,” including a period where minors handed the performers cash “as if in a night club.”

“Live, obscene performances by men dressing as prostitutes should be limited to adult-only establishments,” Nix wrote.

In response, the pride committee said: “In her written testimony, she accused our drag show at last year’s Middletown Pride festival of being ‘obscene and robbed children of their innocence.’ She described ‘Adults, dressed as exaggerated street hookers, were splayed on their backs, spread eagle. Others were bent over and gyrating, intentionally provocative in indescribable ways.’ She accused adults of ‘pushing their sexual perversions and fetishes onto children.’ She added the show was ‘dark, depraved, and immoral.'”

But Nix admitted she had not personally witnessed a single second of the actual performance she was condemning, instead basing her opinion on a set of photographs she saw, the committee said.

That is true, Nix told the Journal-News, adding, “I just saw the photos on Facebook. I posted about it a year ago. Seems like everybody was outraged.”

Nix said while she no longer lives in Middletown, she did for 23 years and served on council.

“Most of my friends are there,” she said. “And pictures of children handing dollar bills to cabaret dancers like that was shocking and appalling.”

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The pride statement said the photos that circulated on social media “appeared to be freeze-frame screen shots from last year’s performance of the few instances where performers were in the middle of various gymnast moves, such as a summersault or backflip or cartwheel, to falsely make it appear they were posing in a sexual manner when no such activities actually occurred.”

The statement called it “intentional manipulation of photographs” used to misrepresent “a wholesome, family-oriented festival in our community.”

Historically, according to the committee statement, drag tipping came from the same origins as tipping street mimes or subway musicians or coffeeshop performers — entertainers not often paid for their performance, or paid nearly nothing, so audience members drop money into the hat on the street corner or open guitar case at their feet.

The statement also pointed to history noting drag has been a publicly-accepted artform.

“From Shakespeare, Milton Berle and the World War II military drag shows future President Ronald Reagan hosted selling War Bonds to TV shows like ‘Bosom Buddies,’ films like ‘Mrs. Doubtfire,’ or a cartoon Bugs Bunny in a dress exposing children to classical opera for the first time, drag has been celebrated as a publicly-accepted artform for literally hundreds of years, only becoming the latest conservative panic button ‘harmful to children’ boogeyman in the past four or five years,” the statement said.

Public obscenity is already illegal in Ohio, and anyone who performs obscene material in public is subject to arrest and criminal prosecution, the statement said, and “we were informed by the city of Middletown that police officers in the crowd observed the drag show last year and witnessed no activity that qualified as lewd or obscene behavior during the performance.”

Middletown Pride said conservative politicians are targeting “marginalized populations.”

“By specifically calling out anyone dressed in clothing of a different gender than the one assigned at birth in the bill as a basis for obscenity claims, legislators are singling out a constitutionally-protected artform and attempting to expand the definition of obscenity to include not only drag but also the daily lives of trans and gender-nonconforming individuals, putting them at greater risk for harm and selective prosecution,” the committee statement says.

Nix told the Journal-News she will likely not attend this year’s festival to watch due to family commitments and “it’s just not my thing.”

“This is not anti-gay. I think anybody can be together. I have gay friends,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me and really it never has, but it is when you involve children that I start having a problem.”

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In her written testimony, Nix said, “It has always been my intention to be open minded to those people with different lifestyles than my own. People should be free to be themselves and love whom they want to love. This is America, land of the free and I pray it never changes.”

But she added, “How grateful I am to have come of age when adults were not pushing their sexual perversions and fetishes onto children.”

House Bill 245 would create a new criminal offense of “unlawful adult cabaret performances” for performances that took place outside a designated adult cabaret that are found to be obscene or harmful to children. If convicted, the new offense would carry a penalty ranging from a first-degree misdemeanor to a fourth-degree felony.

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Nancy Nix, Butler County Auditor’s, complete testimony in support of HB 245:

Chairwoman Abrams, Ranking Member Brown, and members of the House Criminal Justice Committee, thank you for the opportunity to write in support of House Bill 245. I write to you in my capacity as a mother, grandmother, a CPA and former banker, and a 20+ year elected official in Butler County.

It has always been my intention to be open minded to those people with different lifestyles than my own. People should be free to be themselves and love whom they want to love. This is America, land of the free, and I pray that never changes.

Yet, how grateful I am to have come of age when adults were not pushing their sexual perversions and fetishes onto children. The innocence of childhood lasts only a short time, and the robbing of that innocence should shock anyone’s conscience.

Last summer, a Pride event took place in Middletown, which, from the many photos I viewed, was obscene and robbed children of their innocence. Adults, dressed as exaggerated street hookers, were splayed on their backs, spread eagle. Others were bent over and gyrating, intentionally provocative in indescribable ways. This “erotica” did not appear light-hearted and funny, but dark, depraved, and immoral. What’s worse is young children were behaving as if in a night club, standing in the front row handing over $1 bills.

My question is why would grown men “desire” to perform overtly sexual shows in front of children, if not to confuse and defile them?

They say parents know what’s best for their children, but legislatures across the country have passed labor laws to protect children, along with age restrictions for marriage, driving, drinking, etc. Live, obscene performances by men dressing as prostitutes should be limited to adult-only establishments.

Thank you for your service to the citizens of Ohio and your time and consideration of my written testimony in support of HB 245.

Nancy Nix, CPA Butler County Auditor