Teen accuses 'Drag Race' stars of being in 'religious cult' on 'We're Here' (original) (raw)

Season 4 of HBO's We're Here amps up the drag makeover series' colorful take on political action that came to a head on Friday night's episode.

The installment chronicled RuPaul's Drag Race franchise winners Sasha Velour, Priyanka, and Jaida Essence Hall as they prepared for an all-ages, family-friendly drag show in Murfreesboro, Tenn., where drag artists and trans individuals had recently come under fire via the city's new "indecency" ordinance. After attempting to get a permit to hold the show at City Hall, where a door was slammed in their faces, the queens sat in on a town hall meeting in full drag — and came face-to-face with a 16-year-old anti-LGBTQIA+ speaker and her father.

'We're Here' stars Sasha Velour, Priyanka, Jaida Essence Hall, Latrice Royale for 'Entertainment Weekly'.

Jordan Payne

While the queens sat and watched the meeting from a corner of the room, the teen approached the microphone to speak to local officials about what she called "sexually explicit content” and “sexual acts” in front of children at the hands of drag entertainers. She later said that those who participated in the LGBTQIA+ "rainbow movement" were in a "religious cult," which prompted Velour to visibly recoil.

“They worship their own bodies, they worship their hedonism, they bow to the god of relativism,” the girl said. “They worship their sin and sexual immorality."

She also called the queer community "an insult to the Civil Rights movement," and stressed that people are "not born gay, lesbian, or transgender," and that "sexual morality is a choice." Velour, clearly fed up, shouted, "You are lying," when the girl finished, prompting her father to taunt them by clapping at them from across the room.

'We're Here' stars Sasha Velour, Jaida Essence Hall, Priyanka.

Greg Endries/HBO

The episode ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, as Jaida, Sasha, and Priyanka gathered in the building's lobby and fielded a request from the girl and her father, who wanted to talk with them.

Viewers initially got a preview of the tension from this moment in the We're Here season 4 trailer, which showed the girl confronting the queens while referring to "people in the LGBTQ religion," to which Sasha quickly replied, "It's definitely not a religion."

Earlier in the episode, Sasha calls the town's police chief to inquire about the legality of performing a drag show in the area. The man who answers the phone gives the queens an ambiguous answer, though Sasha explains in a confessional why it's important for them to fight for queer rights.

“We need to have all-ages drag shows. People of all ages begin to realize that they are queer themselves," she explains. "I was desperate to see drag when I was a teenager. To see that queer adults had a future and place where they belong. It changed my life."

We're Here season 4 switches up the format of the Emmy-winning docuseries from past episodes, focusing more on the queens' fight to combat anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment in two set locations: Tennessee and Oklahoma, instead of traveling to multiple locales across the country.

Subscribe to EW's Quick Drag podcast for recaps of RuPaul's Drag Race_, including reactions from the cast, special guests, and more._

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