Another Ohio city attempts to ban drag from their local Pride festival

Ashley Driggs made her intentions clear at Monday’s meeting of the Celina City Council.

“I’m not asking for the Pride event to be canceled,” the mother of three said. “I’m asking for the drag show to not be viewable by minors. It should be indoors, at a strip club, where it belongs. Just like we don’t want strippers on poles in schools, we don’t want drag performers to present themselves in front of children.”

Driggs’ comments kicked off a contentious hour of debate about the drag portion of the Pride festival held in Celina, located on the western edge of Ohio, 58 miles northwest of Dayton.

Driggs said she e-mailed a recently surfaced video of the 2022 festivities held at Lakeshore Park, which she said showed a drag performer whose buttocks were not completely covered.

Celina, Ohio: A small town with big Pride [GALLERY]

She was pushing for the City Council to classify drag as “adult cabaret performances,” as she said that drag performances appeal to “sexual interest” and should be kept away from minors.

A similar effort to re-classify drag is currently underway via a ballot measure in Bellefontaine in central Ohio.

Ballot initiative to ban public drag in Ohio rural community is met with LGBTQ+ counter protest

Driggs was followed at the podium by Shawn Meyer, pastor of Aletheia Christian Church, who said that most people in Celina would say the drag performance at Pride “appeals to abnormal unhealthy interests.” Meyer also utilized tropes from the standard conservative playbook of associating LGBTQ+ individuals with predators.

“Children are being recruited into the [Pride] event with a bounce house,” Meyer said. “They’re drawing them in.”

The city councilmembers spent the next hour going back-and-forth with their own law director, trying to find a way to ban the drag portion of the Pride festival but keep the event overall. City law director George Moore repeatedly insisted that this was a matter to be taken up at the state or federal level, not by Celina.

Council president Jason King concluded that the drag portion of the 2022 Pride event was not family-friendly.

“There’s no argument there,” King said. “That part is definitely not [family-friendly] and yet kids were there. So that’s a question. Is it something we can restrict in our own code?”

Ultimately, the City Council did not move forward with any action as the permit for this year’s June 24 event had already been approved. Councilmembers did however encourage the Celina police to be on “alert” during the event and encouraged the local community to be vigialnt.

“You possess a pretty powerful tool. Your phone. If it happens again, put it out there,” Councilperson Mark Fleck told the local community members attending the meeting.

Pride organizers respond

The Celina Pride event is organized by Small Town Pride, a local nonprofit created in 2020 to support the LGBTQ+ community in the Republican stronghold of Mercer County.

Kyle Bruce, the president and co-founder of Small Town Pride, takes exception with the categorization of the 2022 festivities made at the City Council meeting.

“Small Town Pride didn’t necessarily feel last year’s show was inappropriate, and neither did the parents who had attended with their kids,” Bruce told The Buckeye Flame.

Bruce said opposition to Pride has already taken a toll on the event, with a number of sponsors pulling their financial backing after facing “relentless” anti-LGBTQ+ harassing calls and messages from residents of Celina. Still, he said the opposition has also galvanized support of Pride, including new businesses stepping up to sponsor the event and one donor’s $3,000 donation to the drag performers.

“There has been no real effect on us from these [anti-LGBTQ+] antics,” Bruce said.

Small Town Pride is not concerned about the call for more police presence or the potential of other residents interfering with the event.

“If they feel that intimidation is their best course of action, then it should be known that they won’t win,” Bruce said. “We have dealt with this before and we don’t fall easily.”

Small Town Pride has designated a main drag performer who will work with the other performers to approve all outfits, music, and family-friendly adherence. Still, they approach Pride knowing that those who stand in opposition will never be appeased.

“We could concede and concede but at the end of the day [some residents] will always have a problem with what we stand for,” Bruce said. “The drag show will always exist at our event because our support for our community will not be threatened into non-existence.” 🔥

Ignite Action

• The Celina Pride 2023 will be held on June 24. More details on their Facebook event page.
• Check out our 2023 LGBTQ+ Ohio Pride Guide with over 80(!) listings from all across the state.