Apr 16, 2004  |  By: BRIAN MOYLAN  | COMMENTS     

When a national drag act comes to town, performers are usually greeted with cheers and ovations from gay fans. But in the case of Shirley Q. Liquor, who is scheduled to appear at D.C. drag club Ziegfeld’s on April 25, appearances are frequently accompanied by protests.

“Shirley Q. Liquor” is an older black woman on welfare who has 19 children and is portrayed by Chuck Knipp, a white man who lives in Long Beach, Miss. The portrayal has drawn protests at gay clubs in New York and Boston.

“We believe that people have the right to perform, but we have a right to voice our anger or our feelings around a very insensitive, racist, misogynistic show,” said Gary English, executive director of People of Color in Crisis, one of several groups that protested Knipp’s act in New York in 2002. “As a gay black man, whose ancestors lived under Jim Crow and slavery, to have a white gay man do a minstrel show gives out the wrong message.”

In 2002, during Knipp’s first visit to New York City, police arrived at a protest and closed down the Chelsea bar View, fining the club $5,000 under a policy that allows them to close any nightclub deemed to be causing a public disturbance. The police also threatened to arrest protesters if they didn’t disperse.

A month later in Boston, managers of the club Machine cancelled a show after hearing from city officials that a protest was being planned, the Boston Globe reported.

On Feb. 14, 2004, a smaller protest was held in front of the Slide nightclub in New York City, and Knipp’s show went on as scheduled.

“From everything we heard, and now we have first hand witnesses who’ve seen what [Shirley Q. Liquor] peddles in is racism and misogyny and stereotypes that have no place in the contemporary LGBT community,” said Colin Robinson, executive director of the New York State Black Gay Network, which helped organize the 2002 and 2004 protests.

Performer defends act
Knipp, 41, who works as a Quaker minister when he isn’t doing drag, said he is accustomed to defending his performance.

“You can fool with gender, but with race, you can’t fool around with it. I think that’s because we haven’t resolved our issues with race in this country — both black people and white people,” he said in an interview.

“I’ve had people tell me that the concept is inherently racist,” he added. “I just ask them to come and see the show. I have never had anyone who has seen the show that thought it was racist.”

English and Robinson acknowledged they have not seen Knipp’s show, and English said he would not be offended by the act if the character were portrayed by an African-American woman.

Knipp said that his fans include singer Patti LaBelle and drag queen RuPaul.

After the 2002 New York protest, RuPaul posted a statement to his Web site defending Knipp.

“If Mr. Knipp was filled with hatred, my natural gut instinct wouldn’t allow me to enjoy his act,” the statement read.

Legendary D.C. drag queen Ella Fitzgerald (a.k.a. Donnell Robinson), who is black and the director of the drag performances at Ziegfeld’s, is also a fan of Shirley Q. Liquor, Knipp claims. Fitzgerald and officials at Ziegfeld’s could not be reached by press time.

Darren Buckner, former treasurer of the D.C. Coalition — a group for African-American gays in D.C. that is currently on hiatus — said he is not a fan of the Liquor character.

No protests have been planned so far in D.C., sources said.