DeSantis Revokes Alcohol License for Hotel That Staged Drag Show for Kids

Good day to you. Welcome to the Liz Wheeler Show, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has revoked the alcohol license for the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Miami because the hotel staged a drag show at Christmas time of last year in December of 2022, that allowed children under the age of 16 to attend this really graphic, really disgusting, really sexually explicit show.  

So DeSantis says government, this wasn’t DeSantis personally himself, but it is the executive branch of the state government of Florida revoked the liquor license of this hotel. And my oh my is this controversial, not just controversial between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats obviously condemn this, but there are many Republicans who are also criticizing Ron DeSantis for this. They say, Hey, isn’t this a violation of the First Amendment? Don’t these people have a right to free speech, even if Ron DeSantis and other conservatives don’t like what they’re doing?  

How can the government, the state government, punish a private business for staging a drag show, even if DeSantis and others don’t think that children should be allowed to attend a drag show? This is a very, very interesting topic, and I’m going to tell you from the outset that DeSantis is 100% right. There’s two ways to analyze this.  

Two ways we need to analyze this. Two ways we are going to analyze this today, and that is to look at the question, is it the moral thing to do to shut down child drag shows? And is it a legal thing to do for DeSantis to shut down child drag shows in this way? I think you’re going to be very interested in this. But in order to properly understand what we’re looking at here, what this hotel has done, what this drag show was, I wanna read to you just a small excerpt from a publication called Florida’s Voices.  

They are the ones who first reported that the DeSantis administration is revoking the liquor license for the Hyatt Regency in Miami. And this is what they write. They say a drag queen Christmas performed December 27th at the James L. Knight Center, which is reportedly connected to the Hyatt Regency Miami. This is, this is the hotel that’s involved. The administrative complaint that was filed with, with the state of Florida said minors younger than 16 years of age were at the show where performers appeared on stage wearing sexually suggestive clothing and prosthetic female genitalia.  

The show allowed minors if they were accompanied by an adult on December 27th, 2022, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation warned the Hyatt Regency Miami against hosting a sexually explicit show with children present according to the Department of Venue. The venue proceeded with their plans and conducted an investigation which determined that the venue violated Florida statutes.  

Brian Griffin, press secretary for DeSantis said, sexually explicit content is not appropriate to display to children, and doing so violates Florida law. Governor DeSantis stands up for the innocence of children in the classroom and throughout Florida, a Florida’s voice reporter attended the Miami Show and gathered video, which by the way, this is, I apologize that this is graphic. But I do think it’s important to understand exactly what we’re dealing with here, that it’s not just men dressed in drag, which is confusing enough for children.  

I would advocate parents not take their children to see or to expose their children to that, but this is even a step further than simply men dressing up as maybe sexualized versions, stereotype stereotypical versions of women. But just FYI that this is a little graphic description coming up here. So a Florida’s voice reporter attended the Miami Show and gathered video, which displayed screwed off the Red Nippled reindeer.  

I know it’s very graphic, however, it’s really important that we know exactly what we’re dealing with. The complaint said, this is according to Florida’s voice, the complaint said that performers engaged in acts of simulated sexual activity and lewd, vulgar and indecent displays that included, again, I apologize, we gotta know what they’re doing here. Performers forcibly penetrating or rubbing exposed prosthetic female breasts against faces of audience members.  

This is like really grotesque stuff, intentionally exposing performers, prosthetic female breasts and genitalia to the audience, intentionally exposing performers, buttocks to the audience. I can’t even read the next one. You’ll have to go to Florida’s voice and read this themselves. But simulating sex acts is, is the best I’m gonna give you there. And graphic depictions of childbirth and or abortion. There were children in attendance here, children under the age of 16 that were allowed, the Hyatt allowed them just because they were accompanied by a parent.  

So when DeSantis revokes the liquor license of this hotel because his administration had worn the hotel, don’t go through with this. You’re violating Florida state law if you go through with this and you will be held accountable. The response is people on the Left, and some people on the right who are absolutely wrong about this, are pointing the finger at DeSantis and calling him a fascist.  

They’re saying he’s trying to impose his morals and his principles and his political agenda on other people in violation of other constitutional right. So again, what we’re gonna do today is we’re gonna unpack the two questions that are pertinent to this. First of all, is this legal, what DeSantis is doing? And if so, what is the legal mechanism that he used? It’s very important to understand how liquor licenses work, how these regulatory boards at the state level govern, um govern, places like hotels, establishments that sell liquor as part of their business and what the Florida state law is.  

So we’re gonna read all of that together, and then we’re gonna talk about what the right thing to do is because just because something is legal doesn’t make it moral, doesn’t make it right. So just because DeSantis may have the power to do that, should he, is it just, is it, is it prudent? We’re gonna discuss that as well. And we’re gonna talk about the element of free speech here. There are some prominent conservatives on the right who say, listen, this is a matter of free speech.  

It’s a so-called blessing of liberty that people are allowed to engage in speech, meaning performance that is offensive to other people. And the baseline argument there coming from these, these libertarians on the right, is that if we, when Republicans like DeSantis are in positions of power, if we shut down our opposition, which is the drag queen story, or the drag queen shows for children, if we shut down the opposition, isn’t this just going to come back and bite us when liberals are in power and they try to shut down what we’re doing? And I wanna specifically drill down on that question as well. So let’s get to it.  

Okay. So the two questions that we are going to analyze today are, is this legal? What DeSantis is doing? We’re gonna look at the Florida statutes, we’re gonna look at the Florida’s regulatory boards. And I know that sounds a little dry, a little nerdy, but the Left is claiming that it’s not even legal for DeSantis to do this, that he’s being an authoritarian. So I did a deep dive into this. I did the research, found out what powered actually has and what statutes he’s using as justification.  

And we’ll talk about it. You can decide for yourself whether what DeSantis is doing is legal, but before we get to that part, the legal technicality, I actually wanna address the other question first, because something can be legal and that doesn’t make it the right thing to do, right? It’s legal to cheat on your spouse, but that doesn’t make it the moral thing to do.  

It’s immoral, it’s wrong, it’s bad. So let’s start from that standpoint first, because politicians should be held to both standards. Is what they’re doing legal and is what they’re doing right? Is it moral? In order to unpack whether this is moral, we actually have to take a step back for a second. There’s a video that went viral today that I wanna show you. It went wildly viral, like millions and millions of views of Dylan Mulvaney.  

We’ve talked about Dylan Mulvaney quite frequently on this show because Dylan is a cultural phenomenon, having an enormous influence on our culture. Dylan was born male and has transitioned now identifies as a woman and documents this transition on TikTok specifically, I think he has over 10 million followers on TikTok, but has documented this transition on social media through the series called Days of Girlhood, the Day One of Being a Girl, blah, blah, blah, and has become a viral sensation.  

I mean, one of the most famous people on social media. You really can’t be on Instagram or Twitter or TikTok without seeing Dillon. Mulvaney. Dillon Mulvaney is gearing up for day 365 of being a girl, some big production that he’s planning. And in the, in the lead up to this production, he’s making the media rounds. He was on Drew Barrymore’s show talking about himself, and this is what happened. This is, this is a really weird thing that happened. Drew Barrymore was asking these gushing questions, oh, how do you do what you do? How do you protect yourself against the haters? 

And in the midst of these questions, drew Barrymore does the strangest, most uncomfortable thing. Like, I watched this and I got like that prickle of discomfort, like secondhand embarrassment for Drew Barrymore because she, you’ll see this for yourself when I show you the video, but I wanna preemptively warn you what to look for here. Drew Barrymore gets down on her knees in front of Dylan Mulvaney as if she is worshiping this man. And this the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen. Take a look at this.  

How do you stay on your own path? Where do you draw boundaries? Where do you find the strength to keep being the joy?  

Well, I think having my chosen family and the people that I love to take care of me. But I also think there’s something just about making sure that you’re, you don’t put something out there before you’re ready. And, and really just surrounding yourself with good people. It’s interesting because I look at someone like you and I can’t imagine anybody disliking you. 

Oh, please do. You know, do you wanna know, ironically, who dislikes me the most sometimes?  

Who?  

Myself.  

Oh, me too.  

Super strange, right? Super strange. Went viral for a reason. I think Seth Dylan at the Babylon Bee said, well, how do you make a parody out of this, which is his job satire. You can’t, because this is grotesque. It’s so strange. But the point of this, the reason that I’m showing you this is because one thing is very clear in this video, and that is the fact that transgenderism is an ideology.  

Transgenderism is a religion. And so when Drew Barrymore is kneeling in front of Dylan Mulvaney as in this worshipful way, that’s exactly what she’s doing. She’s worshiping at this idol, this ideological idol, this religious idol. Dylan Mulvaney has become the poster child of transitioning of the trans movement, of queer theory. And that’s exactly what we have on display here. Now, there’s obviously tangential ironies here to see a woman kneeling in front of, in front of a man as if we haven’t gotten past that in our society, simply can’t make this stuff up, .  

Um, however, what we’re seeing in this video is not reality. What we’re seeing in this video is the fact that transgenderism is not real. The people are real. Dylan Mulvaney is real. Dylan Mulvaney is made in the image and likeness of God, worthy of dignity and respect. But transgenderism is not real. Transgenderism is an ideology and it’s a religion.  

And more importantly, in this case, it is a political medium. It is a political medium that requires people to pledge filthy, 100% to this ideology. No questioning, no dissent, no discomfort. You must get on board and you must celebrate this. And I promise that this ties into the Ron DeSantis thing, because in order to analyze whether why Ron DeSantis is doing is moral, whether it’s rights, whether it’s something that he should be doing, even if it’s legal or what, regardless of whether it’s legal, we have to understand what it is that we’re dealing with here.  

So transgenderism is an ideology, it’s a religion, and it is not reality. So then we have, it’s politics. It’s politics, it’s a political medium, and it’s a political medium for what? Well, about six months ago we did an episode about queer theory. Queer theory is the ideological underpinning of the transgender ideology. So like Critical Race Theory is the underpinning, the ideological underpinning of these poisonous things that children are being taught in school, that white children are inherently white, black children are inherently, or white children are inherently racist.  

Black children are inherently oppressed. Or the narrative that we heard that said the five black police officers that that beat up Tyree Nichols, even though they’re black, they were agents of white supremacy, even though race was not a factor, an evident factor in this crime. Those, those outgrowths, those tenets are tenants of critical race there.  

Critical race theory is the underpinning of, of those things, of those belief, that belief system, likewise, queer theory is the ideological underpinning of the transgender ideology. So when children in school are taught sex is not the same as gender, sex is what your biology is, but gender is how you identify. When they’re told that you can be a girl.  

If you wanna be a girl, you can be a boy. If you wanna be a girl, you can or you can transition, you can, you can do whatever you want. You can call yourself any kind of neo pronoun. That is the outgrowth, the manifestation of the queer theory underpinning the queer Theory foundation. In the episode we did talked about the founder of queer theory, Gail Rubin, and how Gail Rubin wrote this document. It’s the Bible of queer theory. Not to sound sacrilegious, but they do, they do worship as a religion.  

They, they worship this ideology. And this founding document of queer theory lays out exactly what the intentions of queer theory are. The intentions are Marxism. And in the pursuit of Marxism, queer theory teaches that sex must be a political weapon. Sex must be political, and that children must be sexualized. And that culturally it must be ingrained in a culture that nothing sexual is taboo.  

Nothing sexual is immoral as long as there’s consent. So even child pornography, even pedophilia, that’s okay according to queer theory, as long as long as there’s consent. You and I know that children cannot give consent to sexual abuse, but that doesn’t bother queer theory. Queer theory wants to destroy the innocence of children. They want to pretend that children are adults and therefore separate their children from separate children, from their parents. That’s the only way that you can change a generation.  

The next generation into Marxist, is to separate those children from their non Marxist parents. This is how they’re doing it. Destroying children’s innocence, sexualizing children. This is queer theory, and the transgender ideology is the manifestation of the destruction of sex Essentialism, sex essentialism. I know that’s a, a big sentence. Sex essentialism is the truth. The reality that you’re born a man or you’re born a woman, and there are only two sexes, two genders.  

I don’t even like the word gender anymore. And you can’t, it’s immutable. You can’t change it. That’s sex. Essentialism queer theory exists to destroy sex essentialism. So the transgender ideology is just that, that outgrowth. It’s people like Dylan Mulvaney falling victim to this religious ideology of queer theory through discomfort in their own bodies. So people are vulnerable to this ideology if they suffer from a gender disorder like Dylan Mulvaney clearly did, right?  

So queer theory is the underpinning of this. Again, this all ties into the Ron DeSantis thing. So drag queens. Drag queens, I don’t like that term. I think a more accurate term for drag queens are transgender strippers because what are drag queens? Drag queens are grown adult men who dress up in sexualized outfits pretending to be women. This is anything from very, like too much makeup and very porn star hair to wearing what a set, what amounts to lingerie and prosthetic breasts. Prosthetic genitalia.  

They gyrate, they put on strip shows pretending to be women even though they’re men. And there’s been this cultural phenomenon in our country the past two years now of drag shows for children. All ages are welcome. These drag shows say, even though you wouldn’t take, you wouldn’t take your child to a regular strip club when it’s actual women gyrating and taking off their clothes on stripper poles.  

No one would do that because it’s grotesque, it’s disgusting, it’s inappropriate. But somehow when for some reason, when it’s grown, men who are engaging in this behavior when they’re putting on these shows, it’s okay to take your children there because tolerance celebrate. The LGBTQ+ ideology means it’s okay for children to be taken into this circumstance. It’s not true.  

But there’s a reason. This is not a coincidence. It’s not something that just happened to happen accidentally. It’s not something that we just became aware of. There is a deliberate reason. RuPaul is one of the most prominent, the most famous drag queens in our country. RuPaul is the host of a show called RuPaul’s Drag Race, which has also been a cultural phenomenon, a wildly successful show that has become an entire empire. RuPaul’s Drag Race is not just a television show.  

RuPaul’s Drag Race has products. The contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race have turned their brands, their individual brands, even after they compete on one season of the show into businesses that have made them very prominent, very, very famous, some of them very wealthy. This is a huge movement. And RuPaul said that drag queens are very political. Take a listen to what he says.  

Drag queens are the marines of the queer movement. Don’t it twisted? And don’t be distracted. Register to vote so we can get these stunt queens out of office and put some smart people with real solutions into government.  

Okay? That sentence, drag queens are the Marines of the queer movement. So let’s break that down. What does that mean? The Marines are typically the first ones into a battle. If you’re speaking in military term, you send in the Marines. Why you send in the Marines to do the hard work. You send the Marines in to clear the way for the rest of the military to come.  

So if drag queens are the equivalent in the queer movement to marines in the military, then drag queens are being sent in first to clear out a space for the rest of the so-called queer movement. Now, what is the queer movement? I wanna establish something right here and right now, and that is drag queens or trans people who are identify as transgender. Like I said, transgender people. There’s no such thing as transgender people. There are people who suffer from gender disorders.  

There are people who are transvestite. There is no such thing as a transgender person. You are either a man or a woman regardless of how you dress, regardless of surgeries you have. You are worthy of dignity and respect, but it is not a separate category. There are two categories of people, man and woman. People with gender disorders, regardless of how they dress or whether they’ve had surgery.  

And people who are homosexual, who have different sexual orientations than heterosexual orientations, have equal rights in this country. They are not facing discrimination. They are not facing oppression. They are not e they’re not even facing cultural intolerance, which is not always something you can control. But the important thing for our nation is to make sure that every person, regardless of their race, regardless of their age, regardless of their sex, yes, regardless of their sexual orientation is protected under our constitution or their constitutionally protected rights are actually protected. That, my friends, we have in this nation.  

And we should be very glad about that. You can, you can like me believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. You can like me believe that there are two genders, two sexes, male and female, and you still can advocate for equal rights for every person under the law as I do. That’s the, that’s the properly ordered position to take and understand that that’s what we have in our nation right now. We have a nation where it is not institutionally codified that gay people or people with gender disorders are facing some sort of discrimination because of, because of these things about them, because of these characteristics or these lifestyles that they have chosen. And that’s a good thing. That is, that is a good thing. But it’s very important to establish that because when RuPaul uses this phrase drag queens are marines of the queer movement.  

We have to ask our we have to ask ourselves, well, what is this queer movement, this LGBTQIA+ lobby? What are they seeking? Because if they’re seeking equal rights, they have that. If they’re seeking to have their constitutional rights protected, they have that. If they’re seeking to avoid or overturn institutional discrimination, they also have that. So what exactly are they seeking? Are they seeking special status where they have some kind of extra or additional privileges based on these characteristics that they’ve either these lifestyles that they’ve chosen, or what exactly are they seeking? What is the queer movement?  

Well, queer movement is what we just described. The queer movement is queer theory. Queer theory is a fundamentally neo-Marxist movement that simply uses the sexualization of children and the normalization of perverted sexual behavior, whether it’s child pornography, whether it’s outright pedophilia, and the abolition of sex essentialism, which is the reality of the fact that there are two sexes.  

Um, this is what they use in order to destroy reality of destroy objective truth to then further their Marxist agenda. So when RuPaul says, drag queens are the Marines of the queer movement, the queer movement is queer theory, which is Marxist drag queens. He means if he’s, if he’s comparing them to marines, he means drag queens are on the forefront of being propagators of queer theory.  

One of the most important tenets of queer theory is the sexualization of children, the sexualization of children, and the abolition of sex essentialism. Now, you and I know you can’t actually abolish sex essentialism. It simply is you can’t change that, but you can destroy the perception of sex essentialism, which is what these drag queens are trying to do. So now we come back to DeSantis, DeSantis and the Hyatt Regency in Miami. First of all, we should establish this drag show, a drag queen Christmas who staged this show.  

Who performed in this show? What group was this? A drag queen Christmas was performed by a group of alumni of RuPaul’s Drag Race. This is part of that, that empire, this universe that RuPaul has built around his show. This is part of it. RuPaul, who believes that drag queens are the marines of the queer movement.  

This is what children under the age of 16 we’re exposed to. I’m not gonna repeat the list of the extremely graphic, extremely sexually explicit, the grotesque things that were done, the simulated sex acts that were performed in front of children, the exposure of genitalia that was, that was that children had to face if they were in this audience. You can, you can rewind the show and listen to that list if you want to hear that again. It was performed by alumni of RuPaul’s Drag Race. So this brings us closer to the answer of the question.  

Is DeSantis going after this? Is he trying, when he’s trying to protect children from this, is this the right thing to do? We’ll get to the question of whether it’s legal in a minute, but is this the moral thing to do? Is this the right thing to do? The answer then becomes very obvious.  

The answer to that is a resounding yes. It’s not only right, it’s not only moral, it’s imperative to fight back against this neo Marxist attack that is aimed at our children, that is targeting the innocence of our children, that is attempting to sexualize our children and then pervert their perception of reality so that they think that the truth about sex, oh, I’m not just talking about sexual intercourse, I’m talking about sex is in man and woman, so that it perverts their perception of that and leads them on a path like Dylan Mulvaney.  

It is essential that we fight this fight, and it’s why other Republicans like David French are incorrect when they oppose this. David French is very famously referred to drag queen’s story hours that public libraries host around the country. He’s famously said, I don’t support them. But that is one of the blessings of liberty that the Constitution protects, which is a grotesque thought. It’s simply not true. It doesn’t fall under the helm of free speech. Just because you are allowed to say something doesn’t mean that you are allowed to say it in every single venue without consequences. That’s obvious. That’s well, well founded.  

There’s well-founded precedent in our legal system that upholds that David French addressed the situation that’s happening in Florida, and I wanna bring this up because I want to quote it exactly. He now writes for the New York Times, and he was criticizing the way that Florida, he, by the way, David French was also opposed to Florida’s parental rights and education law, the so-called don’t say gay bill that prohibited the classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade, and prohibited teachers in school administrators from hiding from parents when their minor children were quote unquote transitioning in school.  

David French opposed that on the grounds that he said it was an abridgement of free speech of the teachers doesn’t make any sense because these teachers are absolutely free to say anything that they want outside the classroom, but they’re not free to teach children something that’s not true. Just like they’re not free to go in there and say, one plus one equals free, and that is fact and we will downgrade you if you say one plus one equals two, they, they’re not free to do that.  

They don’t have a protected right to teach something that’s false and pretend it’s true. Just like they don’t have a right to go in there and teach children that there are 27 genders. They don’t have the right to do that. They can believe that and articulate that outside of a public school classroom, but they don’t have a constitutionally protected right to free speech to say those things in the classroom without losing their job.  

This is what French wrote in the New York Times about Florida, and it’s also happening in Texas, but about Florida and banning drag shows for children. He said, and because every culture war action against civil liberties has its mirror image on the other side, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas issued a directive to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate as abuse both surgical and pharmaceutical interventions for transgender children regardless of the good faith and desires of the parents, children and caregivers involved. End quote.  

First of all, as we talked about yesterday in the extended segment for VIPs over on the Liz Wheeler Show community on locals, there is no such thing as a transgender child. There are children who suffer from gender disorders, but there is no such thing as a transgender child. If you use that phrase the way that David French did, then you have bought into a part of the ideology already.  

You are a water carrier for the queer theory ideology that targets children already. However, the bigger picture here is the question, and I know this is a very philosophical question, but the question of what is liberty? Right? What is liberty? Because when David French is standing up for parental rights, I mean, you know that I am I think parental rights are one of the most important issues in our nation. I know you feel the same way, the bar for government to interfere in the relationship between a parent and a child. 

When parents have natural God-given dominion over their children, the bar is extremely high for politicians and government bureaucrats to interfere, to supersede parental authority over their kids. However, the parental right over their child is not absolute. It does not include child abuse. A parent doesn’t have a right to physically harm their child, to beat their child, to mutilate their child’s body and to defend themselves by saying, Hey, I’m the parent.  

I have a right to do this because, you know, parental rights, no, as a society, we first protect the dignity or not the dignity. We protect the constitutional rights of, of children to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right? You don’t have a a parent doesn’t have a right to harm a child, just like a criminal doesn’t have a right to murder someone else. A rapist doesn’t have a right to violate someone’s body. There are, there are crimes that are crimes based on natural law and child abuse is one of them. So parental rights don’t extend to that. They are not a blessing of liberty.  

And it’s really important actually to counter this argument from conservatives and Republicans when they are wrong, because of the severity of what we’re facing, the reality of what we’re facing when it comes to these drag queen story hours or these drag queen, these drag shows for children that lead of course to the pharmaceutical and surgical mutilation of children’s bodies in the name of this gender ideology.  

Um, and that brings us to this philosophical question of what is liberty, right? There’s a misunderstanding on the right that liberty is the highest thing, the highest purpose, that there’s some inherent good or that there’s inherent morality just in liberty, in, in absolute liberty. Another word for absolute liberty is, is license. And there is no inherent morality, no inherent good in liberty in and of itself. It’s that liberty allows us to pursue a higher good liberty is a necessary protection so that we all have the opportunity to pursue a higher good.  

That’s the morality of liberty. That is where the good of liberty lies. But liberty in and of itself is neither here nor there. I mean, you can use liberty for good or you can use liberty for bad, but liberty is necessary only as a medium as a pathway to pursue some higher good.  

And when you see conservatives or Republicans like David French, and there are many others as well, talking about free speech, talking about parental rights to the absolute, you know, that would include taking children to sexually graphic drag, drag shows or mutilating their bodies. They’re missing the point. They’re actually, they don’t understand the definition of liberty as it applies to our country as it was codified in the Constitution of the United States.  

This is not some new version of liberty that I’m introducing now, or that the new right is introducing. Now, this is the liberty that our founding fathers in our constitution not only bought into, but built into the structure of our nation. Libertarians have gotten this wrong. This i this definition of liberty. They’ve gotten it wrong for so long that it’s, this is, they’ve gotten, our country has gotten to this point because of that fundamental misunderstanding of liberty.  

Okay? So what DeSantis is doing back to DeSantis in Florida, again, what DeSantis is doing in Florida is he is not governing like a libertarian. He’s governing through the lens of the understanding of liberty as it should be. That liberty is simply a protection of the opportunity to pursue a higher good. That liberty is not licensed. Liberty is ordered liberty, right? Liberty. That there has to be some order in our society and that order must be ordered around the idea of justice.  

The idea of justice being what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong, what is objectively true or what is objectively false. It is built around natural law. This is what Governor Satis is doing. This is how he’s governing in Florida. And from a purely legal, practical sense, taking away revoking the liquor license of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Miami because they performed this sexually explicit, this lewd drag show for children is absolutely within the state police powers.  

I mean, this is no constitutional right of anybody involved here. I’m talking the hotel or the performers. No constitutional right was even remotely infringed upon this. It’s very straightforward. As a matter of fact every state has regulatory power the way that DeSantis and his administration have over the sale and consumption of alcohol and establishments that serve alcohol, that sell alcohol. And if you have an issue with that, by the way, then the question is, okay, well, should states have a right to regulate alcohol? Should they have a right to regulate who can sell it?  

And establishments that sell it specifically for consumption on the premises? That might be a bigger conversation to have. But every state right now in our country gives the power to regulate alcohol, gives that licensing power to the state. They give that licensing power to the state with specific guidelines on how to apply for that license, how to obtain that license, and what how it can be revoked.  

If you break state laws, then if the establishment breaks a state law, then you can suffer the consequence of having your liquor license revoked. That is what we’re seeing in Florida right now. So the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, this is part of the executive branch of the Florida State Government does require establishments to have a liquor license if they want to sell alcohol. And you have to get this license from the Florida Department of Revenue.  

The regulation of alcohol is primarily due to the fact that it is a way that states earn money. It is also because there is the question of morality over alcohol. So our society, our nation has decided during, during our long history with alcohol, which we’ve taken different positions as a country on whether alcohol should be legal, whether it shouldn’t be legal, when it, when it should be sold, where it should be sold, who can sell it.  

Um, but the fact of the matter is we have come to the consensus. The laws in our book right now allow states to regulate w which establishments can sell alcohol and give them license to do that or not, and they have the power to revoke that license. If state laws are broken now in Florida as of 2022, the statutes on the book that deal with licenses and how they can be revoked or for what offense, va ca these licenses, these liquor licenses can be revoked.  

I’d like to read you a little bit of this Florida state law and you will see you’ll be able to see for yourself whether DeSantis is overstepping his boundaries or whether this is, this is well within his power. Okay, so Florida statute 56129 for anybody that wants to look it up deals with the revocation and suspension of a license.  

It says the division is given full power and authority to revoke or suspend the license of any person holding a license under the beverage law when it is determined or found by the division upon sufficient cause appearing of a violation by the licensee or his or horror or its agents, officers, servants or employees on the licensed premises or elsewhere. While in the scope of employment of any of the laws of this state or of the United States or violation of any municipal or county regulation in regard to the hours of sale, service or consumption of alcoholic beverages or license requirements of special licenses issued under 5610.20 or engaging in or permitting disorderly conduct on the licensed premises or permitting another on the licensed premises to violate any of the laws of the state or of the United States.  

A conviction of the licensee or his or her or its agents officers, servants or employees in any criminal court of any violation as set forth in this paragraph, shall not be considered in proceedings before the division for suspension or revocation of a license except as permitted by chapter 92 or the rules by evidence.  

So what have we here, we have multiple mechanisms for the state of Florida to legally revoke the liquor license of an establishment that has obtained a license and is serving alcohol as part of their business. And there are two parts that are extremely relevant in, in this paragraph from the statute that I read to you. First of all, if any licensee or employee or any of the other, anybody associated with a licensee has violated any, any Florida law or any law of the United States, any federal law that is grounds for revocation of a license period, that’s it. That’s all it takes.  

You can lose your liquor license. If the division, meaning this agency of the Florida State Government, the executive branch of the Florida State government has found that you have violated any Florida law, then you can lose your license. And that is, that that is all there is to it.  

That is all there is to it violation by the licensee or elsewhere in the scope of employment of any of the laws of the state or the United States, or this is the second part, engaging in or permitting, disorderly conduct on the licensed premises. So there are two parts of this law are two parts of this statute in Florida that allows DeSantis to revoke the liquor license. This is not fascism, this is not authoritarianism, this is not tyranny.  

This is a power that DeSantis rightfully holds as chief executive of the state of Florida, a power given to him by the state legislature, a power that he has every right to execute. In fact, it’s his duty to execute when these establishments which are acting under the license given to them by the state of Florida, are violating a Florida law. It is against the law in Florida to perform a drag show, a sexually graphic explicit drag show for minors for children that is a Florida state law.  

It prohibits what this establishment did. So this establishment was in violation of that law. In fact, this establishment was given plenty of warning. They were told don’t perform the show by the Florida State Government. They were told, don’t perform the show or else you’re gonna lose your liquor license. This establishment chose to do so anyway.  

So it should come as no surprise. This is actually the least controversial thing. It’s not controversial at all. This is on the books in Florida. This is not only the right and the moral and the essential thing for DeSantis to do because the Left is weaponizing children. They’re targeting children, they’re using queer theory, this sexualization of children. This idea that you can somehow pervert the perception of objective truth when it comes to sex. To turn these children away from their parents, to separate families, parents from their children so that parents no longer pass on their values to their kids.  

So that instead of parents passing on their values to their kids, kids are indoctrinated by teachers and by TikTok and by pop culture in neo Marxist ideology and gender ideology that turns them into Marxist themselves. Marxist who will vote for Democrats. It’s evil on so many levels. It’s evil because it targets individual children and it harms individual children.  

It’s abusive to individual children. It’s evil and it’s dangerous for our country because to co-opt an entire generation of small children and turn them against their parents to turn them into Marxist is dangerous for the longevity of our country. Our nation will not survive if we allow this to happen. So DeSantis not only has a duty and a responsibility, he has a moral obligation to fight back against this. Unfortunately, the state of Florida has given him the power that he needs through the legislature and then the executive branch of the government regulating the sale of alcohol and what constitutes an appropriate revocation or appropriate standard for revoking a liquor license.  

It’s given him the mechanism to make sure that his state is operating in this way. He’s absolutely allowed to do it and he is doing the right thing. Governors all across the country should follow suit. Alright? It’s legal, it’s moral, it’s imperative, and it’s exactly what we need to do to fight back against the Marxist left. 

Thank you for watching today. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is the Liz Wheeler Show.