In 1947, Florida shut down a popular drag club. The state has resurrected the case to do it again.

Gov. Ron DeSantis filed a complaint last month against R House over its drag shows, citing a 1947 state Supreme Court case that shut down the Ha Ha Club.

In March 1947, a Florida court ordered the Ha Ha Club — a nightclub famous for its “female impersonators,” as they were called at the time — to close after declaring it a public nuisance. 

The order came just a month after Frank Tuppen, a juvenile probation officer with political ambitions, filed a complaint against the venue. He argued that the club’s performers were “sexual perverts” who had embedded “in the minds of the youngsters” who lived in the area “things immoral” and were “breaking down their character.”

The owner of the club, Charles “Babe” Baker, appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, but in October 1947, it affirmed the lower court’s decision that the club was a public nuisance. “Men impersonating women” in performances that are “nasty, suggestive and indecent” injure the “manners and morals of the people,” the court ruled.

Andrea Kinig at the Ha Ha Club in New York City. Herb Breuer / NY Daily News via Getty ImagesLast month, nearly 75 later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is widely thought to be eyeing a 2024 presidential run, cited the case that shut down Ha Ha Club in a complaint against Miami restaurant R House over its drag performances. 

The 2022 complaint, filed by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, threatened to revoke R House’s liquor license, arguing that the establishment violated a state public nuisance law by becoming “manifestly injurious to the morals or manners of the people.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/1947-florida-shut-popular-drag-club-state-resurrected-case-rcna40947


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