A lesbian performer’s satirical show that was to be part of a symposium at a South Carolina university has been pulled after lawmakers complained that it is a recruitment tool and a “glorification” of same-sex attraction.
Leigh Hendrix’s one-woman show, “How To Be a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less,” was on the schedule of the two-day Bodies of Knowledge 6 Symposium and Conference, being held at the University of South Carolina Upstate, but the school’s administration cancelled the performance, caving to pressure from state legislators, including senators Mike Fair and Lee Bright, who see the piece as gay propaganda, The Huffington Post reports.
The report quotes a university spokesperson as saying that the controversy over the show was undermining the symposium’s purpose and led to the decision to strike it from the program.
In response to the cancellation, Hendrix — channelling her show’s character, “expert lesbian” Butchy McDyke — explains that her “self-help seminar” is a kind of recruitment tool but not one “designed to turn wives and daughters into lesbians.” Instead, it seeks to “get a bunch of lesbians in a room” and help them live their “best lesbian life,” she says.
“I’m going to let you in on a big lesbian secret, right here,” she says, conspiratorially. “There are not, in fact, any rules about how to be a lesbian. No. And do you know what else? This seminar is not just for lesbians. No, it is really for everybody, because everybody has got to figure out how to craft an honest and engaging narrative about who they are in the world.”
South Carolina legislators recently cut the funding of Upstate and the College of Charleston because they assigned literature with gay content to students. The contentious books are Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel (author of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For), and Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio, by Ed Madden and Candace Chellew-Hodge.
Republican lawmaker Garry Smith, who was behind funding cuts to the collective tune of $70,000, argued that the books promote “a lifestyle” and do not “reflect community standards.”
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