“If American Armageddon was indeed looming in the casinos of post-MAGA Vegas, it appeared that nobody cared.”
When it comes to sexual politics, the contrast with Rosen could not be more pronounced. The freshman senator introduced the Equality Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment and housing. She co-sponsored the Respect for Marriage Act, recognises Pride Month, and has been endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer civil rights organisation.
None of which appeared to matter to the bros at the slot machines, but all of which matters a great deal to Las Vegas’s thriving LGBTQ community. GLAAD estimates that 145,000 LGBTQ people live in Nevada, with more than one in five of them raising children. Nor is it news that if love is love then sex is sex in this neck of the desert, as all the clubs, from high-end Zouk and TAO to cellar dwellers such as the Palomino and Discopussy are as apt to feature gay as straight strippers, and drag show brunches are as prevalent as traditionally cis-gender feathers, leather, and lace.
In this regard, Las Vegas is once again at the forefront of national politics, for the question of LGBTQ rights has come to dominate the American election cycle. The past few years of public outcry over commingling biological males and females in college sports has powered what was once a peripheral issue to the centre of American reaction. So far, various Right-wing PACs have dropped $17 million on more than 30,000 30-second spots attacking Kamala Harris for her stance on transgender athletes, which as National Public Radio noted, were focused on NFL and college football broadcasts.
Sensing liberal weakness on the flashpoint of boys playing with girls, Captain Brown made a point of showing up for a photo-op with the University of Nevada’s Wolf Pack women’s volleyball team, which gained national attention after some members refused to take the court against the San Jose State Spartans, which includes a transgender player. “I stand with them,” declared Brown. “Let’s make sure that this is the fight that we’re in ’til the end.” The issue loomed large over Brown and Rosen’s single debate, impelling the Las Vegas Review to blare the headline: “Transgender sports rift is officially a Nevada election issue.”
Once again, Las Vegas is America’s crystal ball. No doubt, the results in Nevada will provide a peek into the legislative prospects of same-sex marriage, marriage equality, gender-affirming medical treatment, sex education, and various and sundry in-school “Don’t Say Gay” rules and regs all over America. Not to mention the hot-button issue of drag queen story hour for the kiddies, as bans are considered in Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Montana, Oklahoma and Utah.
Forget about climate change and genocide in Sudan. Who cares that the world is teetering on World War Three? In America, where the Dow is up, sex and drugs are cheap, and the cheeseburgers excellent, the question of who will control the nuclear codes has come down to women’s volleyball.
After a while spent contemplating this fact, and four glasses of watered-down Sauvignon Blanc later (the preferred drink of East Coast liberal journalists), I concluded that the most responsible decision would be to head over to the front lines of America’s LGBTQ wars, where multi-millionaire RuPaul, the world’s most famous drag queen, has been running his own franchised version of Trump’s The Apprentice: RuPaul’s Drag Race Live! Las Vegas. As I purchased the $100 ticket, I had no doubt that it was here that America’s most sex-positive city would deliver its referendum as to whether or not the push for LGBTQ rights had gone too far — or not far enough.
RuPaul’s eponymous show was running at The Flamingo, a somewhat down-market hotel and casino across the street from The Bellagio and Caesar’s Palace, which refreshingly offers no pretence of grandeur. The second show of “Queens Are Wild” Drag Race began late, so the alcohol had had plenty of time to achieve its cumulative effects on the tourists, who were boozily cheering each other on at the tables. I waited in line, madly deleting tsunamis of Jacky Rosen fundraising e-mails from my phone, which were now landing at a frantic pace. If she didn’t get her $750,000 by midnight, she’d be cooked.
I’m not a heavy consumer of the drag show, so it came as a surprise that ground zero of the trans menace emanated a rather wholesome vibe, completely lacking in the creepy concupiscence wafting over from the XX strippers on stage a dozen or so steps to the left. I was also delighted to find that RuPaul drag race fans are an intellectual lot, as the two women from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who shared my table held forth on the nuances of every queen going back 16 seasons.
The lights dimmed and then, for the first time since I’d landed, there was Kamala Harris in her lavender pants suit, flashing her smile on giant twin screens. Quiet engulfed the crowd as her voice filled the room. “We are all in this together,” she said. “Your vote is your power.” The crowd erupted into a spontaneous amen — yes, quite literally, “Amen”. Carried away by religious fervour, the two women from Iowa gleefully shouted: “You better work, Bitch!”
I shouldn’t have been shocked by such an enthusiastic response. After all, the greatest political motivator is victimhood. Trump plays the card all the time, hustling his mugshot t-shirts and bloody-ear coffee mugs, declaring the libs are coming after him endlessly, unfairly, unjustly. So why shouldn’t the LGBTQ community and their allies use their own persecution by anti-gay legislators as a means of rallying the base — even if Kamala’s lavender pants-suit was giving off a strictly asexual Hillary Clinton vibe.
After a Seventies disco number and a cheeky Britney hit, it seemed absolutely normal to see Barack Obama appear on those same gigantic screens, reminding us of the politics of love. In doing so, he cemented the unlikely fact that a drag show at The Flamingo was the one place in Clark County, Nevada that was fully realising our fraught political moment. Who would have expected such political punch from a show featuring sculpted dance boys wearing assless purple chaps? Or that the half-naked crew would reach their writhing climax holding placards with the plea: “Register to Vote.”
It was a refreshing moment: a community under attack was fighting the good fight. There was, perhaps, some hope left for America. Either that, or we were all about to be consumed by terminal victimhood. And so it was back to the chaos of the casino floor, where the future was as secure as craps.
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SubscribeWhen ‘gay rights’ has become forcing women to allow men into their sports and promoting men dressed as women gyrating in front of school kids, the plot has been lost, as the Brits say. We’re quite a ways from the simple goal of simply being allowed to be. But that’s how activists roll. They are incapable of taking yes for an answer; they cannot claim victory because that’s not the point of activism. The point is to perpetuate the activism. Claiming a win would mean these people might have to get real jobs.
The community is not “under attack,” as the article claims. Gay has become mainstream. Everyone knows, works with, or is related to a gay or lesbian. It’s the other letters that are at issue and it would be nice if people stopped pretending otherwise. The LGB part has long been settled. The rest of the alphabet is something else.
Apologies that I accidentally disliked your comment when I was trying to give it a wholehearted like!
Not sure if it works on this system but you can usually correct such errors by voting again in the opposite direction
FFS! How about we ignore this BS and avoid WWIII?
I enjoyed this glimpse of Las Vegas – but I’d add an observation. When a journalist makes ‘something’ a proxy for ‘everything’, and other journalists advance different proxies then no proxy carries any conviction. It’s just a journalist struggling for something catchy to earn a crust.
The Senate battle is over. West Virginia and North Dakota flips have sealed it for the Republicans. Nothing to do with Nevada. But, heck, reporting from Wheeling or Bismark is no fun compared with a few days in Sin City.
While I agree with that, a few extra seats would be a help – OH, PA, NV – all which may go R. The House is another matter – there are 20-30 seats which are way too close to call from outside.