The House State Affairs committee voted Monday morning to advance a bill prohibiting the Board of Regents or any institution under its control from using state resources for obscene live conduct.
Rep. Chris Karr’s (R-Sioux Falls) bill represents his second year of bringing legislation on this topic. In 2023, he sponsored and cosponsored bills aimed at preventing a student-led drag show held in November 2022 at South Dakota State University from ever happening again.
Drag became popular in 19th century British theater and has heavy roots in modern LGBTQ+ culture for its performance and entertainment styles that challenge traditional assumptions of gender identity and expression.
While Karr said in his rebuttal on Monday that opponents to his bill misunderstood it because he never mentioned drag or drag shows in his testimony Monday, opponent testimony and testimony from previous bill hearings indicates that’s where the focus lies.
A similar bill, House Bill 1113, to “prohibit the use of state resources for the provision of lewd or lascivious content,” was killed earlier in the session and mirrored the bills Karr brought in 2023, House Bill 1116 and House Bill 1125.