Arkansas GOP may have totally botched its own anti-drag show law: expert

Republicans in Arkansas have been trying to pass a law that would classify any event featuring drag performances as an adult event, but one legal expert thinks their proposal as currently written might not even achieve its intended purpose.

In an interview with Business Insider, UCLA School of Law professor Eugene Volokh argued that the GOP's bill might not even apply to drag shows given how confusingly written it is.

At issue, said Volokh, is a clause in the bill that tries to lump drag shows in with events that are of "prurient interest," which he says has a very specific definition that may not apply to all drag events.

"It's one of the prongs essentially of the three-prong obscenity test," Volokh told the publication. "And it means a shameful or morbid interest in sex or excretion and sex in the sense of sexual activity... It has to be, essentially in some respect, erotic."

READ MORE: Lead investigator blows the whistle on key finding Jan. 6 committee ignored in final report

Events such as drag queen story hours, which simply feature people in drag reading stories to children, would thus not qualify, as would several other kinds of drag events that are not erotic in nature.

This is especially problematic for this particular law, which purports to target events featuring performers who "exaggerate sexual aspects of the masculine or feminine body for entertainment purposes."

"It's hard to for me to see what exaggerating sexual aspects of a body for entertainment purposes means," commented Volokh. "That's not a legally well-defined term."