(This paper was written on March 13th.)
The Nine Anti-Trans bills currently in the Kentucky House and Senate sessions, introduced in conjunction with a sweeping wave of anti LGBTQ+ laws across the nation, are a threat to queer people’s safety and livelihood everywhere. Senate Bill 115 defines drag performance as “adult entertainment” and restricts "drag shows" within 1,000 feet of homes, schools, parks, walking trails, public libraries, and churches. Beloved communal spaces, like the Old Louisville Coffee Cooperative would be affected by this decision.
Play, a prominent local queer bar, speaks on how Senate Bill 115’s wording would hinder the art of drag from “virtually all venues across the state of Kentucky.”
These bills represent a callback to a recent and unburied history of alt-right movements. This organized power casts a veil of false humanity while simultaneously trying to justify violent beliefs that trans, nonbinary, and intersex identities are not as valid as their cis counterparts, or reducible to simply “drag.”
The wording behind these bills is very intentional.
Senate Bill 115 defines drag performance in what I can only compare to a Tucker Carlson rant- the bill’s rhetoric falls just short of homophobic slurs. As someone just delving into their genderqueer identity, the scariest part of this bill is how “Drag performances” are defined as performances “before an audience for entertainment while exhibiting a gender expression that is inconsistent with the biological sex formally recognized on the performer’s original birth certificate.”
Such performances will be banned within 1,000 feet of many public places. This bill would give police legal grounds to discriminate against visibly queer people by further defining drag performances as “using clothing makeup or other physical markers… [as a] featured aspect of the performance taken as a whole.”
If that explanation was vague and confusing for you, you’re not alone. It’s not the first-time intentional vagueness has been weaponized to further oppress queer people. This round of deadly bills runs parallel to the wave of anti-cross-dressing laws passed in 1848 in Ohio and 40 other US cities which created similar laws. Those laws gave police legal grounds to harass anyone not “passing,” or presenting as the gender they were not assigned at birth.
Sound familiar? Something else making this outright attack on queerness even scarier is the fact that police and queer people are not exactly known for getting along-and for good reason.
When the Downtowner, a popular and historic queer bar in Louisville was bombed in 1975, Louisville police never found the terrorist. This history of surviving homophobic terrorism did not stop Louisville police from donning gloves in a 1984 raid of the bar, however. The gloves, a clear nod to the ongoing AIDs epidemic at the time were worn to “protect the officers from HIV.” LMPD’s homophobic imagery and hate here was evident: Louisville police, just like the officers in the Stonewall raids, chose the side of the oppressor—a tradition the Louisville police continue to uphold today.
As sad and dangerous as this is for those who just want to live life as their authentic selves, Louisville’s history of queer resistance is rich and ongoing.
Today, all eight co-owners of the Old Louisville Coffee Co-Op honor this legacy in providing a safe, sober place ran by and for queer people to simply breathe, study, or socialize.
Something that helps keep this café more fit to meet the needs of its customers and community than its competitors is the structure of the business itself: there is no boss.
Harping on the importance of democracy, co-owner Adrian describes the store’s business model simply as a worker’s cooperative, in which workers have an “equal share in the business, and equal decision-making power.” Everyone working in this business is a co-owner. Everyone gets one vote.
Paving the way for a new model of more equitable labor in Kentucky has not been easy, however.
The state of Kentucky has attempted to ignore the store’s unique structure and communal benefit by slapping them with a $4,000 fine in not providing worker’s comp. Creating and meeting their Gofundme goal of $5,000 within a week to legally contest these fines and establish a new legal precedent for more worker cooperatives in Kentucky to proliferate, Old Louisville Coffee Cooperative’s very existence represents the contested life queer laborers experience under a system that centers profit over people.
We can honor the Cooperative’s ongoing work in the café and the world by supporting the shop, staying informed about this round of bills, and getting to know your neighbors and baristas that are actively fighting to make this world a better, safer place for everyone.
