In the face of threats and censorship against drag performers, World of Wonder creates the first-ever Drag Defense Fund.
With a substantial donation from MTV and RuPaul’s Drag Race, the Drag Defense Fund will support the ACLU’s LGBTQ rights work.
MTV has a deep history and long legacy of supporting the LGBTQ+ community – from Pedro Zamora, TV’s first AIDS/HIV cast member on The Real World (1994) to starting a grant program enabling Trans youth to change their government IDs to reflect their gender identity (2020).
Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project says in a statement,
Families, communities, and transgender people ourselves are working tirelessly against a relentless assault on transgender people’s basic freedom and rights.
Across the history of the queer community, our art and our joy has been censored, restricted, and criminalized and those pillars of our community are once again coming under attack.
We’re thankful for the support of the Drag Defense Fund and are committed to protecting drag performers from these baseless and unconstitutional attacks on their art.”
You can make your own donation to the Drag Defense Fund here.
RuPaul posted a message on social media, further elaborating on this crucial time in LGBTQ rights and what can be done today.
Ru says,
Drag queens are the Marines of the queer movement. Don’t get it twisted!
