Drag Bans Aren’t New — and Laws Haven’t Changed Much Since 1887

Montana is the latest state to ban drag performances. The bill included more references to drag in earlier drafts, but now mentions only a ban on “drag story hour” and “sexually oriented or obscene performances.” It targets performances on public property where children are present, public schools, and libraries — and something more specific that seems to be on the minds of lawmakers: One line item singles out performances that feature prosthetic breastplates, like those worn by drag queens. 

If you think this law sounds as though it was lifted straight out of the Victorian Era, you’re right. The claim that “we need to protect minors” by legislating what kinds of performance are acceptable is a line conservative legislators have used since the 1880s. In fact, in 1887, Montanans applied this same logic in an attempt to ban women’s cross-dressing onstage and the exposure of minors to variety theaters, among other things. 

As a historian focused on gender and performance in Montana’s early years, I’ve uncovered archival evidence of such attempts to legislate what happens onstage that echo, eerily, what’s happening today in Montana and nationwide. At the heart of these bans are myths about gender and queerness — and the idea that youth need protection from the newfangled “evils” they could be exposed to at something like drag story hour in a public library. 

That 1887 petition makes it clear: There’s a long history of gender-bending performance in Montana and the United States. Beyond the realm of performance, gender variance is nothing new.

It was 136 years ago when over 500 people from across the then-territory of Montana drafted a petition to send to the 15^th Territorial Legislature. The goal was to ban women in “character dresses” — meaning anything from the 19th-century equivalent to today’s drag kings to performers in skimpy attire — from public performances. The petition read: “Women who appear in semi-nudity or in ‘character dresses’ [should] be entirely precluded from any part of the auditorium of any place of public resort…. [Minors employed] in such an atmosphere can have but one tendency, and that for evil.”

One such location was Ming’s Opera House, opened in 1880, which featured cross-dressing by women in stagings of German and Italian operas. Ming’s was considered one of the territory’s most esteemed theaters, attended by citizens deemed respectable by those who policed morality. This attempt to regulate performance was odd. Women had been wearing all sorts of attire and cross-dressing in American variety theaters since the early 1870s. Why, suddenly, were Montana petitioners and lawmakers concerning themselves with this kind of performance? 

According to census records and experts at the Montana Historical Society, in 1883, the Northern Pacific Railway connected through Helena for the first time, bringing new waves of white settler families. Christian groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and Salvation Army began loudly advocating for changes to the state’s frontier reputation. Many of their attempts to legislate succeeded, irrevocably changing Montana’s legal and cultural landscape. Throughout the 1887 legislative session, Montana saw an uptick in petitions against things that groups like the WCTU and Salvation Army deemed “immoral.” There were petitions for prohibition of liquor sales and gambling, and for closure of all businesses and theaters on Sundays.