(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — Tennessee has become the first state to restrict drag performances in public.

HB 9, signed by Gov. Bill Lee, makes “a person who engages in an adult cabaret performance on public property” — or where it can be viewed by minors — a criminal offense.

The bill includes “topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators, or similar entertainers” in the definition of “adult cabaret performance.”

A first-time offender will be charged with a misdemeanor. A second or subsequent violation would be a Class E felony, the legislation reads.

Lee also signed a bill banning transgender health care for people under the age of 18.

Right-wing and conservative backlash against drag shows and the transgender community has prompted legislative restrictions on both groups.

Drag performers have told ABC News that family-friendly drag shows are being misconstrued as sexual.

“For a couple of minutes, an hour or two, whatever the case may be – I just want everybody to forget all their troubles,” Catrina Lovelace, a drag queen, previously told ABC News. “For me, what a drag show is, is just a celebration of life.”

Activists and allies say this is an attempt at banning queer spaces and culture, and a move to push LGBTQ people back into the closet, according to the Human Rights Commission.

“Neither of these laws are about protecting youth – they are about spreading dangerous misinformation against the transgender community,” said Human Rights Campaign Legal Director Sarah Warbelow.

She continued, “They are about doubling down on efforts to attack drag artists and transgender youth … drag is a longstanding, celebratory form of entertainment and a meaningful source of employment for many across the state.”

Laws against drag, cross-dressing and gender nonconformity were similarly enforced in the early to mid-1900s, which led to the criminalization of the community.

Sen. Jack Johnson, a sponsor of the bill, celebrated the bill as it headed to Lee’s desk.

“This bill gives confidence to parents that they can take their kids to a public or private show and will not be blindsided by a sexualized performance,” Lee said in a tweet.

Several similar bills have been recently introduced against drag shows in states like Florida, Arizona, Texas and others.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(SAN FRANCISCO) — Russell Jeung’s family was forcibly removed from their homes in Monterey, California, in the late 1800s.

“When the townspeople wanted the Chinese out, the landlord evicted them. When the Chinese wouldn’t leave, a fire burned down the entire village,” Jeung, co-founder of the Stop AAPI Hate group, told ABC News.

“My great grandparents … saw their entire life’s work burned down,” he said.

They found a new home in San Francisco’s Chinatown, “as the only place of safety against that racism,” Jeung said. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, that safe haven became a target of anti-Asian racism.

San Francisco officials received 60 reports of hate crimes against AAPI people in the city during 2021, a more than 500% increase compared to the nine incidents reported in 2020.

Between March 2020 and March 31, 2022, Jeung’s group Stop AAPI Hate recorded nearly 11,500 reports of hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) persons across the U.S.

This is markedly higher than the number of reported hate crimes during the same period of time, which advocates say are undercounted.

“We have high numbers of elders reporting, even though elders tend to under report,” Jeung said. “Our Asian elders, they often don’t speak English. They don’t have online technology. So the high rate of elders reporting just shows that it is a problem facing them.”

Currently, Anti-Asian hate incidents are reportedly down across the country, but the trauma and reality of this hate remains, especially for Susanna Yee, whose 88-year-old grandmother was brutally attacked while exercising one morning in a local park in January 2019.

“Although I have come to a place of forgiveness, there’s still pain and feelings of grief that wells up occasionally,” Yee, the granddaughter of Yik Oi Huang, said in an interview with ABC News. Her grandmother died a year after the attack.

“I saw this incident with my grandmother as an opportunity to reach out and to connect with people who don’t look like me or us and to understand each other so that this incident and other incidents don’t happen again,” Yee said.

The man charged with attacking Huang, 21-year-old Keonte Gathron, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Yee says she is still grieving and has leaned on others in the Asian American community throughout this healing process.

She has embraced Tai Chi, as her grandmother did: “To be in community with a group of Chinese elders is just so nourishing and full of love.”

“What happened to my grandmother has impacted the way I move in the world,” Yee said.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(MILWAUKEE) — Cashay Henderson, a Black transgender woman fatally shot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is remembered by her family as “a jokester,” “independent,” “unapologetic,” and someone who “walks to the beat of her own drum.”

And though she’s remembered as a strong, bright presence in the lives of many, her family told ABC News that the discrimination Henderson felt she and other transgender people faced took a toll on Henderson.

“She’s like, ‘I don’t wish this life on anyone,'” said Veronica Beck, her cousin, recalling a conversation they had about the LGBTQ community.

“I knew things weren’t easy. But that wasn’t the first time that I just knew that, man, she was really struggling. It was a shocking comment, because, you know, she’s always so strong, confident and smiling,” Beck said.

Henderson, 31, was found dead on Sunday when the Milwaukee Fire Department responded to a fire at the building. Her death is being investigated as a homicide, officials say, after she was found with a fatal gunshot injury.

She is at least the fourth known transgender woman in Milwaukee to be killed in the past year. Brazil Johnson was killed in June 2022, Toi Davis was killed in July 2022 and Regina Allen was killed in August 2022. These killings have not yet been deemed hate crimes by officials.

Still, transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime nationwide, according to a study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.

Beck said that it seemed like every week, Henderson would post on social media about transgender and queer friends who had lost their lives.

“She even said that she was happy she didn’t have [Rest in Peace] in front of her name, like a week or two” before her death, said Beck.

Diverse & Resilient, a local LGBTQ advocacy group Henderson was involved with, said they’re in mourning.

“While we are filled with grief, we are also filled with anger,” the group said in a statement posted on Facebook. The group hosted a vigil Wednesday in honor of Henderson’s memory.

The group criticized conservative legislators for recent inflammatory rhetoric against transgender people and the LGBTQ community.

“The continued attacks by right-wing elected officials to remove safety and rights for trans people are causing an increase in vitriol and hatred toward people of Trans experience. We call for an immediate halt to the hateful rhetoric and the dangerous bills that are written as a result of transphobia and lies,” the statement read.

Roughly 350 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced or advanced nationwide this year, according to the ACLU.

Henderson’s hometown of Chicago has also long been plagued by violence against transgender people, activists have told ABC News.

“I remember her saying all the issues she would have,” Beck said. “She was a teenager, I remember her saying about a friend getting beat up or something, or they would walk around and people would yell out at them and harass them as they’re walking around, because they were dressed like women.”

Beck said that when Henderson began openly identifying as a woman when she was a young teen in Chicago, her family accepted her for who she was.

Henderson, known for “doing her own thing” and not worrying about what others had to think of her, became a well-known figure in the LGBTQ community in Milwaukee, where she lived and Chicago, where she was born and raised. The family say they have received support from several local LGBTQ organizations that Henderson was a part of.

They say Henderson prioritized fostering a supportive community, and found that in her family and in the organizations she was active in.

“I’m proud of her. I’m proud that she made an impact on our community,” said Levette Whitlock, Henderson’s cousin. “I’m proud people are standing up for her. I love that her community is coming and helping us.”

Now, her family is demanding justice as they wait for charges to be filed in Milwaukee police’s investigation into her death. A person of interest, a 33-year-old man from Neenah, Wisconsin, was recently arrested in connection to this homicide, police said. The person of interest has not yet been charged.

Police have not released any information about a motive or whether she was targeted because she was transgender.

“As adults … we live our lives, we just get so tangled up, and we didn’t really get a chance to really, like, sit down and be with each other and hug each other, and I’ll never get to do that,” Whitlock said.

In honor of Henderson’s memory, her family urges others to embrace who they are fully and unapologetically.

“Love yourself and surround yourself with people who support you,” said Beck.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.