Liberty Counsel filed a motion to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to step in and defend the interests of concerned parents and stay a preliminary injunction forcing the city of Naples, Florida to allow an obscene LGBTQ drag show performance outdoors in view of children at an upcoming “pride” festival on June 7.

Last month, U.S. District Judge John Steele denied Liberty Counsel’s motion to intervene because it had not been filed soon enough before the injunction decision. The injunction strikes down the city’s indoor venue requirements and age restrictions allowing the show’s lewd and sexualized content to be performed just 100 feet from the children’s playground. Judge Steele sided with Naples Pride, the LGBTQ advocacy group sponsoring the show, finding the drag show performance is “speech protected by the First Amendment.”

Liberty Counsel is asking the appeals court to retroactively grant its intervention request and decide this motion on an emergency basis before the scheduled performance.

In April, the Naples City Council voted 5-2 to move the traditionally lewd and indecent drag show indoors away from Cambier Park that is frequented by parents and their children, and to put an adults-only restriction on the event. Liberty Counsel decided to step in when the city of Naples failed to defend those restrictions at a May 2 preliminary injunction hearing using U.S Supreme Court precedents that allow for “shielding minors” from indecent material.

Judge Steele seemed to accept the Naples Pride characterization that its drag show is “family friendly.” Yet, before its motion to intervene, Liberty Counsel presented evidence in an amicus brief containing photographic documentation from the 2022 outdoor show held just 100 feet from the children’s playground. These images depict male performers in obscene drag performing lewd poses and simulating sexual acts that are unsuitable for minors. The drag performers also invited children to place money in their waist bands like strippers in a bar as the men shook their over-stuffed brazier tops and “twerked” their fish net covered hind ends mimicking sexual activities no child should ever see. The scenes are revolting and totally inappropriate for children.

However, Judge Steele made no mention of these depictions nor did his ruling address the rights of parents or the government’s compelling interest to protect children from sexually inappropriate conduct.

The city of Naples had previously revoked the group’s permit to use the park after these lewd 2022 performances, and Naples Pride was forced to take their sexual deviancy celebration behind closed doors. In 2023 and 2024, the event was held inside and away from children in the park. But this year, the same group wants to publicly display their scantily clad bodies to visually assault the children and indoctrinate them.  

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The First Amendment does not require any city to provide its public spaces for every type of expressive conduct under every condition preferred by the speaker. Unfortunately, the strongest defenses to the city’s drag show restrictions were not previously presented to the court. Liberty Counsel will keep working to intervene in this case to give parents who wish to protect their children from obscene drag performances a fuller defense on the legal and constitutional issues left unspoken by the city of Naples. The First Amendment does not protect an obscene drag performance in full view of a children’s playground. Restricting speech for children that is otherwise protected for adults passes constitutional muster in the interest of protecting their well-being. Citizens do not have to tolerate obscene drag shows in view of their children.”