LOVE, HOPE, AND DRAG IN UTAH.

• Author: Wylie, Niki Chan
• Position: ON THE LINE

"Drag is activism," Tara Lipsyncki says after co-hosting an all-ages drag show in April at a restaurant in Logan, Utah. "Drag is a political statement. Every day you go out in drag, you're putting on war paint because we are in a cultural war right now."

In our state, like many others in 2023, a Republicancontrolled legislature passed several anti-trans bills and banned books that contain LGBTQ+ themes in schools. Putting on their act in a small, rural place like Logan--a largely white and Mormon community eighty miles north of Salt Lake City--prompted the performers to arrange for a police presence. Despite the tension, it was, for Lipsyncki, a chance to counter conservative stereotypes about drag.

At the core of the art, they...