I suspect the Republican legislators behind it are feeling a bit surprised, as they thought it was legally safe because the ban against “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest” specified “prurient interest.” Their intent, of course, was for that bit to be ignored in practice and they drafted it in the knowledge that the law would be immediately weaponized against anyone remotely gender non-conforming in any context (that wasn’t a licensed “adult cabaret”). But that bit of plausible deniability in their intent doesn’t work when they’re so clear about their ultimate aims - everyone knows it’s not about kids seeing raunchy drag acts (that are already confined to adult audiences) but pure policing of gender norms that starts by targeting non-cis het people and likely ends up going after women wearing pants.
I’ve long held that really any kind of interesting/colorful men’s fashions in the US immediately get coded as “gay,” and homophobia ends up constraining men’s fashion choices.
