What a Drag! Weaponized Ambiguity: Policy Diffusion and the Censorship of Drag Performance

Background: Recent state-level censorship laws have increasingly targeted drag and gender-nonconforming performance under the guise of child protection and public welfare. These laws often rely on broad, vague statutory language, such as “adult-oriented performance” or “harmful to minors,” that enables discretionary enforcement against LGBTQIA+ individuals while maintaining legal deniability. This study investigates how such ambiguity is deliberately used in legislation, and how coordinated policy diffusion facilitates the rapid replication of anti-drag laws across state legislatures.

Methods: Using a grounded theory approach, this qualitative study analyzed 36 bills (passed, pending, or defeated) introduced between 2022 and 2024 that regulate, or ban drag performance in the United States. Legislative texts were coded using ATLAS.ti through a multi-phase coding process integrating both inductive and deductive strategies. Deductive codes were drawn from feminist theory, queer theory, morality policy theory, and social construction theory to examine how laws reinforce heteronormativity, symbolic moral panic, and control over public space. Additional constructs such as “patriarchy,” “child safeguarding,” “symbolic legislation,” and “government regulation” were used to identify patterns of justification and exclusion. Saturation was confirmed using Guest et al.'s (2020) saturation test, and triangulation included peer debriefing, positionality memos.

Results: Findings reveal that legal ambiguity is not incidental, but a strategic tool of ideological governance. Bills frequently share language across states, echoing model legislation and rhetorical framing supported by conservative legal networks. By avoiding specific references to drag while defining it through gendered descriptions of clothing or makeup, lawmakers enable selective criminalization of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals. This censorship is embedded in broader efforts to police identity and restrict LGBTQIA+ visibility in both public and private space.

Conclusion and implications: For social workers, understanding the weaponization of ambiguity in law is essential to countering the systemic erasure of marginalized identities. This study contributes to queer legal scholarship, critical policy analysis, and social work advocacy by offering a structural understanding of how legislative ambiguity is deployed to suppress marginalized identities. Social workers, policy professionals, and legal advocates must recognize and resist these strategies in order to protect the rights, safety, and expressive freedom of LGBTQIA+ communities.