Kevin Bacon, the prolific, acclaimed and non-controversial star of TV and beloved films, is one of the last Hollywood celebrities you’d expect to be caught in a culture wars firestorm or face conservative calls to effectively be canceled.
But he and Kyra Sedgewick, his wife of 35 years, are facing a fierce online response after he posted a video of them joyfully dancing together to Taylor Swift’s song “Karma” to show their support for drag performers, amid Republican-led efforts to limit drag shows and transgender rights across a number of states in recent months.
In their dance video that has gone viral, the couple both wear T-shirts that read: “Drag is an art and drag is a right.” In a caption on Twitter and Instagram, Bacon wrote: “Drag bans are bad karma. Right now, drag performers and the LGBTQIA+ community need our help”
#DragBans are bad karma. Right now, drag performers and the LGBTQIA+ community need our help. Shop the @SixDegreesofKB campaign supporting the @ACLU Drag Defense Fund or make a gift https://t.co/Ef2Eiz8Mzg #DragIsARight pic.twitter.com/BUyfecVFA4
— Kevin Bacon (@kevinbacon) April 23, 2023
The star of “Footloose,” “A Few Good Men” and “Apollo 13” also shared a link to his charity Six Degrees, highlighting its efforts to support the ACLU’s Drag Defense Fund, and wrote, “Bigotry will not be tolerated.”
On TikTok, Bacon posted another video in which he said, “Drag is a centuries-old art form of creativity, expression and self-exploration.” As other forms of artistic expression, Bacon said drag is protected by the First Amendment, while expressing dismay that drag performers and other members of the LGBTQ community are “facing unwarranted censorship and threats across the country.”
Bacon and Sedgwick, recent subjects of a People magazine cover story about their enduring marriage, loving family and work as film, TV and theater artists, are well-known advocates for the LGBTQ+ community, People magazine said. Bacon’s Twitter, Instagram and TikTok posts also received a combined 1.3 million likes and a number of supportive comments from fans and other celebrities.
What a privilege it is to share this life together @kyrasedgwick. Thanks @people for talking to us about all things love, life, and #SpaceOddity in theaters this Friday. Check out our cover issue at the link and on newsstands Friday! https://t.co/CE4n6wip4f pic.twitter.com/lBtuDdQOFk
— Kevin Bacon (@kevinbacon) March 29, 2023
But Bacon’s accounts also were inundated with angry and inflammatory comments about the need for laws, such as the recently passed bill in Tennessee, to “protect children” from drag performers, who people said are trying to “groom” children by exposing them to sexually explicit performances. Some accused Bacon of being a “groomer” himself, while others said they didn’t need to hear from more “woke” celebrities and declared that they would stop watching the couple’s movies or TV shows.
Others insisted that no one is trying to ban drag performances for adults. “We simply do not want you pushing it on kids. Why are you obsessed with kids seeing it?” conservative commentator Carmine Sabia said on Twitter.
Bacon’s video was likely prompted by Tennessee’s law, which is the first in the nation to restrict drag performances and is therefore the focus of intense national debate. The law restricts “adult cabaret performances” in public or in the presence of children, and bans these performances from occurring within 1,000 feet of schools, public parks, or places of worship, NPR reported. Performers who break the law risk being charged with a misdemeanor or a felony for a repeat offense, with penalties ranging from fines to a year or more in jail or prison.
The word “drag” doesn’t appear in the new law, which instead uses the term “adult cabaret,” defined in Tennessee to mean “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors,” Politico said. “Male or female impersonators” now belong in this category, along with strippers and topless and exotic dancers, Politico also said.
The law was supposed to go into effect April 1 but was temporarily blocked by a federal judge who sided with a Memphis-based theater troupe, who filed a lawsuit claiming that the statute violates the First Amendment, Politico reported. U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker said Tennessee failed to make a compelling argument as to why the state needed the new law, adding that the statute also appears to be vague and overly broad.
With the law being vague, drag performers and others in the LGBTQ community have a number of reasonable concerns, Jules Gill-Peterson, a historian and professor at Johns Hopkins University, told NPR. Gill-Peterson, who studies transgender history and the history of sexuality, said it may be “hard to imagine” that police might suddenly arrive at a Pride parade and arrest drag queens because children are in the crowd.
“But I think this is the sort of uncertainty of how these laws are written,” Gill-Peterson said. “And so the question is, what is going to be the newfound danger that folks are going to face at a popular family friendly event like Pride?” She said anti-drag legislation in Tennessee and other states could potentially allow the government to exercise “a really powerful degree of authority” in determining what people can wear in public and how people are “allowed to exist when … walking down the street.”
Gill-Peterson also suggested that these laws could take America back to the 19th century when jurisdictions, including San Francisco, passed legislation that banned someone from being out in public if they were wearing clothing that was different from the sex they were assigned at birth.
These laws “were really used for many decades, well into the 20th century, to imperil and harass, but also silence LGBT people,” Gill-Peterson said.
That’s the message Bacon and Sedgewick were trying to put out with their video. Another point made by Bacon and others is that drag is an art form that’s been around for centuries and has enjoyed a place in mainstream American entertainment, as the Associated Press reported. Milton Berle, “Mr. Television,” appeared in drag on public airways in the early 1950s, Robin Williams dressed up as a kindly British nanny in the hit 1993 family film “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” has become a bona fide cultural phenomenon, AP said.
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, a professor of culture and gender studies at the University of Michigan, told the Associated Press that drag typically doesn’t involve nudity or stripping and would avoid the use of explicitly sexual and profane language in performances where children are present. “Drag is not a threat to anyone. It makes no sense to be criminalizing or vilifying drag in 2023,” La Fountain-Stokes said.
Someone replying to Bacon’s Instagram post challenged those who say they want to “protect children,” asking whether these people feel guarded when passing a Victoria’s Secret store with their children or when taking them to college or professional sports games where cheerleaders wear crop tops.
“Let’s be real, it’s not the idea of kids being introduced to themes of sexuality that really bothers you — it’s the idea of kids being introduced to gender non-conforming individuals that bothers you,” the person said.
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