Miss Mae Hem performing in Lancaster, Ohio — Photo: YouTube
An Ohio Republican is seeking to change the state’s child exploitation laws after a video of a nine-year-old boy performing in drag went viral.
Rep. Tim Shaffer (R-Lancaster) wants to close a “loophole in Ohio’s child exploitation law” by altering the definition of child endangerment to include performances that “suggests a minor is participating or engaging in sexual activity, masturbation, or bestiality and that, taken as a whole by the average person applying contemporary community standards, appeals to prurient interest,” the Toledo Blade reports.
The video, shared in December last year, shows Miss Mae Hem — real name Jacob Measley — performing at JD Henderson’s in Lancaster, Ohio.
Measley is seen dancing, death-dropping, and taking tips from the bar’s customers during the routine.
The video was seized upon by a number of right-wing and conservative Christian blogs, which eventually led to Schaffer’s response.
Under his proposed bill, any establishment that allows such a performance to take place would see its liquor license revoked.
The law as it currently stands punishes misdemeanor child endangerment with a $1,000 fine and up to six months in prison. That can rise to felony charges for repeat offenses, or if the child suffers harm.
“Given our heightened focus on human trafficking and the role money plays in trafficking children, I knew I had to take action to make sure this activity does not occur again,” Schaffer said in a statement. “We can do better to protect innocent children and we must do better.”
But Measley’s mother, Jerri Measley, said that her son’s performance had been “grossly warped.”
She told the Toledo Blade that the family closely monitors her son’s performances — including the music selection, vetoing or censoring sexual language — and checks the venues where he performs to ensure his safety.
“Jacob is just a guy who likes to dress up and dance and feel pretty,” she said. “It’s kind of like Halloween every time he has the opportunity to do it.”
Measley added that while she understands objections to her son performing in a bar, around adults and alcohol, she said there are limited other opportunities for an LGBTQ child who wants to express themselves through drag.
“Where else is there right now for children who identify as being in the LGBT community to explore that interest? There’s not,” she told the Blade.
State Sen. Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo) said that she supports Schaffer’s bill, and said lawmakers are “trying to prevent human trafficking from happening, especially the commercial, sexual exploitation of children.”
She told the Blade: “I don’t see how this is not very closely related to that issue — that concept of a rape culture where we’re normalizing this type of activity.”
However, Jerri Measley said that her son’s performance is being unfairly targeted, given that young musicians also perform in bars late at night.
“The difference is a lack of wig and heels,” she said.
In a Facebook post earlier this year, Lancaster Mayor David Scheffler countered some of the claims circulating online about the performance.
It came after a fake Facebook page purporting to be the “City of Lancaster” spread a falsified depiction of the events surrounding Measley’s performance.
“Per the video circulated, the minor was fully clothed and was not touched by anyone in the audience,” Scheffler wrote. “His parents were in attendance.”
Scheffler noted that Lancaster police investigated the performance after complaints were made, “but could determine no violations of city ordinances or state laws.”
However, Scheffler noted that the owners of JD Henderson’s “did not approve of or condone this activity,” and that they “condemned the show and banned this troupe of performers from returning to the establishment.”
Scheffler also said that “serious threats of violence” were made following the circulation of the video.
Republicans in Congress have added six anti-LGBTQ riders to the annual State Department funding bill for fiscal year 2027.
Democrats have denounced the riders as "poison pills" that could jeopardize the bill's passage and unfairly target LGBTQ people.
"None of these riders make our world any safer," U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, said in a statement. "It's beyond shameful that the Republican majority has again tainted this vitally important bill with these poison pill riders."
"I'm mainly exhausted at this point," Bosco says of the political attacks that have been lobbed against members of the transgender community. "It's just never-ending. It's just this deluge of hate that keeps on happening.
"But the thing with a lot of right-wing talking points is they pick a boogeyman or some sort of scapegoat and they change it about every ten years," the trans drag performer adds. "It's been trans people for a while, it's been Mexican people, it's been Black people, it's been any sort of 'other' that they can then manipulate people into being afraid of, and then they can blame all of the problems in the country on that one group of people. And right now trans people are taking the brunt of it."
Reid Rasner, a gay Republican running for Wyoming's lone U.S. House seat, has settled a federal defamation lawsuit against an Iowa man who falsely called him a "pedophile" on social media and is continuing separate defamation lawsuits against four Wyoming Republicans in state court.
Rasner sued Iowa resident Michael Leonard Cooley Jr. in March, alleging that Cooley repeatedly accused him on social media of being a "pedophile." According to the complaint, Cooley made "hateful false statements" intended to harm Rasner "in his Wyoming personal and professional life."
The two men did not know each other before the lawsuit, but Rasner alleged that Cooley's accusations caused him personal, professional, and political harm.
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