'I refuse to live my life in fear.' The drag scene is alive and strutting in Cincinnati 👠

Drag shows have been the talk of the nation lately. At least 14 states have introduced bills restricting or banning drag performances; a federal judge ruled Tennessee's first-in-the-nation drag-restriction law was unconstitutional.

But here in Cincinnati? Drag is alive, well and flourishing.

“Drag is a pretty integral part of Cincinnati,” said Britton Spitler, who goes by the drag name of Brock Leah Spears. (Get it? Broccoli spears?) “You can’t go anywhere without running into a drag show somewhere. Or a drag brunch or a fundraiser.”

Center stage at Cincinnati Pride

This weekend, drag will play center stage in the dozens of events that make up Cincinnati Pride, culminating most publicly with Saturday’s Pride Parade.

Drag is just one aspect of the Pride festivities, mind you. But it is one that is purposefully hard to miss. For some performers, drag is an occasion for dress-up, the more outlandish the better. It’s like a never-ending Halloween. But for many others, drag has become a potent form of activism.

"It’s an old trope, but I think it’s pretty fair,” said Michael Wilson, known onstage as Molly Mormen. “Whenever you’re in a place with a larger population, you’re going to be around people who act or look different from you.”

Those personal interactions put a human face on people who might otherwise exist only as one-dimensional stereotypes on TV or in newspapers.

Friday, Mormen – yes, that is a humorous name, too, as Mormen was raised Mormon in Utah – played host at a pre-Pride party on Court Street, adjacent to the Kroger headquarters, where he works.

“My dress will be the Kroger blue and white featuring a Kroger logo,” said Wilson. “It’s part of a company-wide spotlight on Pride. I’m very proud of the company’s commitment. To say that it’s come a long way is an understatement.”

Read the list of the weekend’s corporate sponsors and it’s a veritable who’s who of A-list Cincinnati. Besides Kroger, there is Procter & Gamble, Delta, Pure Romance, Fifth Third Bank, Altafiber, Hard Rock, Kao and many others.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in the 1990s, Cincinnati was hit with a flurry of legislation aimed at banning personal protections based on gender and sexual orientation. And it wasn’t just legislators who had their say. In 1993, for instance, Cincinnati voters passed Article 12, a charter amendment barring the city from enacting policies that allowed gay people “any claim of minority or protected status, quota preference or other preferential treatment.”

Drag performers were not the sole target, of course. But they were, by the very nature of their performances, the most visible targets.

The legislation would remain in effect for more than a decade.

'We have to forget about all the enemies in the world'

“I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years,” said Jessica Dimon, a performer and the show hostess at Bloom OTR, one of the area’s busiest drag stages. “My first Pride ever was more of a protest. We were making a statement. It was festive. But there was a push to get rid of those laws. Our message was that we have to forget about all the enemies in the world and move past this.”

What was different was that the city and its largest corporations made a commitment to LGBTQ rights.”

“They wanted to attract investment," said gay history author Jacob Hogue, “and corporations weren’t about to make major investments in a city that was perceived to have such a closed mind.”

There was also the negative impact of the 2001 civil unrest in Over-the-Rhine, the backlash from the police fatally shooting an unarmed 19-year-old Black man named Timothy Thomas. That led to a modest exodus from the city of more conservative voters, which gave more weight to the liberal-minded voters who remained in the city.

More important, though, was that city voters didn’t like the pervasive anti-gay, anti-Black mood that had defined so much of local politics during the previous 20 years. They were ready for a change. And so were the area’s largest corporations. So along with increasingly activist LGBTQ+ and Black communities, the city and major businesses put on a huge push to repeal Article 12.

On Nov. 2, 2004, Cincinnati voters did just that, voting by a 54 to 46 majority to repeal Article 12. Things began to change.

“I wouldn’t say that we’re immune to negativity today,” said Patrick Carnes, known as Lady Phaedra onstage. “But in the past decade or so, we definitely developed a thicker wall of support protecting us.”

In April, for example, just two weeks after Tennessee enacted its anti-drag legislation, Cincinnati Music Theatre posted on social media that only 147 tickets remained for its upcoming production of “Kinky Boots,” a musical in which drag queens are at the heart of the plot. For the community theater, it was an unprecedented response for a show that was still a month away from opening.

“We didn’t pick the show because drag was so central to the plot,” said “Kinky Boots” director Aubrey E. Wilson. “We did it because it's such a good show and has such positive sentiments.”

Wilson said the show got no direct pushback focusing on drag. Quite the opposite, in fact. A school from Nashville contacted Cincinnati Music Theatre and said they hoped to bring as many as 35 students to Cincinnati to see the show, but they couldn’t afford full-priced tickets. Cincinnati Music Theatre and the Aronoff helped to fundraise for the school and, in the end, 28 of them made the 735-mile round-trip.

“Cincinnati has an incredibly vibrant drag community,” said Wilson. “And that drag community is very much committed not only to their art but raising money and helping their community.”

'It takes a lot of audacity to come after me'

Indeed, Michael Wilson (Mormen) – no relation to Aubrey – is a member of a nonprofit group called the Imperial Sovereign Queen City Court of the Buckeye Empire, which is part of the International Court Council, a 58-year-old group with nearly 80 regional affiliates.

“When I first came to Cincinnati, I didn’t really know anyone,” said Michael Wilson. “I had lost my family and my church community. So when I heard about a drag for charity event, I thought it sounded like a lot of fun. It was a great way to do good and give back to the community, even though I didn’t have any roots here at the time.”

In the end, it was how he found a family of friends and a connection to the LGBTQ+ community.

“We’ve raised well over $500,000 in the past decade, for people living with HIV and AIDS, for homeless LGBT youth – all sorts of things. I came to recognize how fortunate I am.”

His life hasn’t been without significant bumps in the road. His house was vandalized. He’s had bricks thrown through his windows and had lit firecrackers and a broken bottle thrown at him.

“It takes a lot of audacity to come after me,” he said. “With heels and a wig, I top out at well over 7 feet. So yes, it sometimes gets scary. But you know what? I refuse to live my life in fear. I refuse to live my life in hate. My thought is if I can show love, if I can be a light and share my story then that is the best way to affect change. I’m willing to hear what anyone has to say. But they have to be willing to hear me, too.”