Bowling Green Pride Fest: Art or Obscenity?

During the public comment section of the Bowling Green City Commission meeting Tuesday, Feb 16th, Warren County Conservatives argued that the lewd performances hosted during the 2021 Bowling Green Pride Fest have no place in our community and violate the city’s obscenity code.

Keep scrolling to read remarks.

Contact Bowling Green City Commissioners today and urge them to enforce public decency ordinances consistently.

Bowling Green Pride Fest: Art or Obscenity?

As Americans we have an innate sense of fairness. One might say – it’s our one redeeming quality. It allows us to overcome our faults, our prejudices, and acknowledge each other as equals.   We as Americans start and join wars over fairness… 

We cannot make everyone the same height, weight, sex – we cannot make people equal financially, or grant them intelligence or wisdom they do not have.  But, from our inception – we have acknowledged that we are all equal under the law.   Our constitution states this eloquently – it’s what makes us different.

Here in Bowling Green, we have had issues in the past with events leading to excess.  In the 1970’s Western was picked by Playboy magazine as the #1 party college in the United States. An event that was met by community and university leaders with changes to Greek organizations, and local ordinances to ensure we did not remain so.   

In the early 1980’s a heavy rock band came to town for a concert and significant damage was done to the Western Campus, again community leaders and the WKU administration took action – banning specific types of events. You may also remember that it was nearly 20 years before concerts of any kind graced our town again. 

In the late 80’s early 90’s Western hosted Rugby intermural finals – followed by a party that gained a significant following – it was called the Banshee.  There were issues with public nudity, obscenity, violence and underage drinking, and it too ceased to be welcome here.

Here in Bowling green, we have expectations of conduct.  Our community has a long-standing social contract, defined and codified within our city and county bylaws that clearly represents our values. As members of the community, we expect that our fellow members will be treated, and will treat us equally within that contract, and that we will all abide by the regulations defined within it.

Which brings me to the point of my presentation tonight.  On Saturday, October 23, 2021, Bowling Green hosted the Pride Festival.  An event that my wife and I have attended in the past.  One that allows members of our community to celebrate their differences, and the many joys that life brings. 

At the conclusion of pride fest, the event sponsors hosted a Drag show, where performers dress as the opposite sex – and perform for an audience for prizes and recognition. This event has been hosted before and is one of the highlights of the event.  The Drag show last year was different.  A few performers choose to step outside the bounds of normal conduct – and violated the city’s code on Obscene material (section 9.2 – https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/bowlinggreen/latest/bowlinggreen_ky/0-0-0-56530 ).

I won’t go into the explicit details of the violation, except to say the performances were well outside the code, to include the depiction of sexual acts, sexual excitement, and partially denuded human figures. 

Following the event, public outcry, both in the papers and here within these chambers demanded action, and the community waited for action from this body.  Waited for the organizers to provide an apology, a statement of future correction.  Waited five months now – and it has become clearly obvious that nothing will be done without further action and public pressure. 

A series of follow up calls on the matter, finally resulted in a statement from the city attorney – that the performances were “covered by a right to artistic expression”.  Which is interesting – because the word Artistic is only mentioned once in the code (included along with a copy of my statement) – clearly with regard to evaluating obscene content – “..taken as a whole it lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors.”.   The word “Minors” however is used 15 times within the document.  The entire purpose of the code is to shield minors from inappropriate content.

Minors were clearly present at the event, and the highly sexualized content – where adults danced around in their underwear, has no “literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” to minors.

What has become clear to the community, is that one privileged group is being permitted to violate our social contract.  This is not a fair adjudication of the law.  We do not permit Male or Female Reviews, strip tease presentations, or even provocative advertisements for such in the public forum. 

If we did, I am sure more than a few local businesses would advantage themselves of the opportunity.  Those events must occur behind closed doors – where minors are excluded, and advertisements for such must follow section 9.2 of the city code. 

You, members of the city council have an obligation to act, the “bad as I want to be” crowd is watching;  I can assure you that a failure to act will result in even more inflammatory conduct within our community.