An LGBTQ bar in Miami has received threats and negative reviews on its social media pages after a conservative activist accused it of having children perform in drag shows.
In one Instagram post, a user wrote: “I hope y’all end up like Pulse,” referring to the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, 2016 that killed 49 people and wounded 53. The FBI later deemed the shooting a terrorist attack.
In another instance, a Facebook user from Houston, Texas, gave the bar a zero-star review, writing: “Has children involved in their x-rated shows. Having money thrown at the children and telling them to pick it up! Unbelievable!!”
But Thomas Donall, the owner of the Palace, in South Beach, says that the threats and negative messages making false accusations against the bar on social media are untrue — the result of a misinformation campaign being spread by conservatives.
The incident that sparked the conservative outrage was a drag show where a performer was doing a routine dedicated to Madonna. Two young girls, whose parents had brought them to the bar, got permission to interact with the drag queens and began prancing and voguing on stage alongside a drag queen. The children, following the drag queen’s example, began picking up dollar bills from the floor that were dropped by customers as “tips” for the drag queen.
“It was all innocent fun for the girls,” Donall told Miami-based ABC affiliate WPLG. “I mean, they were posing with a Madonna show.”
However, Angela Stanton-King, a former Republican congressional candidate, conservative activist, and supporter of the QAnon conspiracy movement, claimed that she went to the Palace earlier this year and saw the children interacting with the drag queen.
“These people have children in a [expletive] drag show,” she said in a video she shot. She shared the video on Instagram with her nearly 300,000 followers, including footage of a confrontation she had with a Palace employee, during which she said: “I feel offended and disrespected by being a survivor of sexual abuse!”
Stanton-King has argued that city officials must take action to keep drag queen away from children, adding: “I’m anti-sexual exploitation of children.”
Such rhetoric isn’t new for Stanton-King, a Trump acolyte who was pardoned by the former president for her role in a car theft ring, who has previously spread misinformation on various topics on social media.
But Donall worries that Stanton-King’s misinformation campaign is going too far, and hurting his business, which was already negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene recently repeated Stanton-King’s claims when she called for the drag queen who interacted with the children at the club (while, in typical fashion for Greene, misstating the club’s location, as well as repeating other erroneous information). This has prompted some conspiracy theorists to complain to Miami Beach City Hall, urging politicians to step in and stop the drag shows.
Donall claims one city official even asked him to change the drag queens’ artistic expression.
A spokeswoman for the city told WPLG she wasn’t aware the city had taken any action against the bar. But Donall says the attacks are taking a toll on his staff.
“It’s really difficult for us and heart-wrenching … I mean it just makes me … really sick to my stomach,” he said.
The wigs? On point. The lashes? On point. The costumes? On point. The plot? No point.
Fans of RuPaul's Drag Race might forgive the mess that is Drag: The Musical, but anyone else with an IQ higher than a mannequin with head trauma should sashay away from New World Stages where high-camp plateaus and not enough shade can be thrown.
Tomas Costanza, Justin Andrew Honard (Alaska Thunderfuck), and Ashley Gordon are responsible for the book, music, and lyrics, all of which are rehashed from material you've seen before and jokes that are about as funny as a calculus class.
A new report finds that Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act has potentially cost the country billions of dollars in the year since it became law.
The report by Open for Business, a coalition of global companies that prize LGBTQ inclusion, claims that Uganda has lost a minimum of $470 million and as much as $1.6 billion, a sum that comprises between 0.9% and 3.2% of the country's gross domestic product.
The report also claims the law could result in combined losses of anywhere between $2.3 billion and $8.3 billion over five years if it is not repealed.
The report identified eight critical areas in which the anti-gay law has impacted Uganda’s economy, including international aid, foreign direct investment, tourism and national reputation, public health, national productivity, policing and legal costs, human capital and talent flight, and trade relations.
Rapper and record producer Sean "Diddy" Combs has been hit with six new lawsuits filed against him in federal court, including four in which the plaintiffs are men, claiming the music mogul sexually assaulted them.
The assaults are alleged to have taken place at industry events, "exclusive" after-parties, and Combs' famous "White Parties" in the Hamptons between 1995 and 2021. The latest suits bring the total number of sexual assault accusations against Combs to 18, reports The New York Times.
Two of the men have accused Combs of assaulting them at his star-studded White Party. One victim, who was 16 at the time of the alleged assault in 1998, claims Combs told him to drop his pants and proceeded to fondle his genitals. Combs allegedly told the boy, who was trying to break into the music industry, that the assault was a "rite of passage."
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