Posted 2025-04-01

After the Lane County Commission voted 3-0 on April 1 to ban drag shows in Eugene, Eugene city councilors pushed back — pointing out that the county cannot control what the city does. 

The commission is made up of five members. However, Commission Chair David Loveall has banned the two female commissioners, Heather Buch and Laurie Trieger, from voting on any issues that involve “gender and DEI,” saying it’s not something they need to “worry their pretty little heads about.”

City Councilor Mike Clark said after hearing about the vote that he objected strenuously to the county’s overreach. “I don’t think I like drag — I don’t know, I have never seen it — but it’s the principle of the matter. Also, I like ’80s music, and I hear they lip sync to that a lot.”

Commissioner Ryan Ceniga, who also sits on the Junction City School Board and claims he has never seen a drag performance “but knows drag when he sees it,” said there were not enough drag shows outside of Eugene in Lane County to “make a ban count,” which is why the board chose to ban the shows in the city, “in order to really slay.”

When Eugene Mayor Kaarin Knudson also attempted to explain why the commission couldn’t ban anything in the city rather than the county, Ceniga said she “wasn’t allowed” to weigh in on DEI either while the men were talking.