A new bill in Iowa would make attending drag performances with one’s own kids a felony punishable by up to five years in jail, and it just moved out of an Iowa House of Representatives subcommittee. The language of the bill is so broad that it could include any performance involving a transgender person, even if it’s not a drag performance, opponents argue.

House Study Bill 158 would make it illegal to take a minor to a drag performance, even if that performance is family-friendly. Parents could be charged with a class D felony if they take their kids to a drag story hour, and businesses could be fined $10,000 for allowing minors to attend such a performance.

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The bill isn’t about lewd drag performances; it’s about any performance where a performer wears “clothing, makeup, accessories or other gender signifiers” that are “different than the performer’s gender assigned at birth.” The bill says this applies to any show that includes singing, dancing, reading, or performing “before an audience for entertainment.”

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Maxwell Mowitz of the LGBTQ+ organization One Iowa told the subcommittee that the bill could make it illegal for people to bring children to hear him speak because he’s transgender, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reports.

“I’m a transgender person,” he said. “I was assigned female at birth, but I dress and live as a masculine person. So this bill targets me. This bill also defines performance as reading: Today, I’m reading testimony in front of a group of people, from the perspective of a trans person.”

“It seems to me that the language of this bill could be bent to make it illegal for a minor to attend an event in which I am speaking, including this very subcommittee, simply because I live ‘in drag,’ as a different gender than the sex that I was assigned at birth, which is drag according to this legislation.”

He said that this could affect whether kids are allowed to see artworks that involve cross-dressing, including movies like Mrs. Doubtfire and Mulan and plays like Twelfth Night.

Jim Obradovich of the Independent Venue Association of Iowa said that small community theater programs would be affected because actors often take on roles of different genders due to resource constraints.

Christian conservatives said that the bill is necessary because they believe that children seeing someone wearing clothes not associated with their sex assigned at birth is harmful to them. There is no evidence to support this claim.

“It breaks my heart,” said Danny Carroll of the Christian conservative organization Family Leader. “This is not the Iowa that I knew when I came here in 1971 that we would be having such a discussion whether or not children should go to a drag show and be allowed inside.”

Republican lawmakers Helena Hayes and Heather Hora voted to advance the bill, while the Democrat on the subcommittee, Elinor Levin of Iowa City, opposed it.

Hayes said that the LGBTQ+ people who testified that the bill was rooted in hatred of trans people were wrong. She said that she has heard “many concerns” from parents about drag shows. The bill, though, would do nothing to affect those parents since it only restricts parents who want to go to drag shows with their kids.

Several states have already passed bans on drag performances. Tennessee banned drag performances in places where there is a chance the kids might see them in 2023, and a federal judge promptly blocked it from going into effect, citing the First Amendment.

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