‘Because of you’

Florence, Arizona — For three brief hours one Saturday in May, an unremarkably beige banquet hall in the rural prison town of Florence, Arizona, was transformed into a shimmering spectacle of joy.

A small but rapt audience cheered and hollered as statuesque drag artists paraded between tables in skyscraping Dolly Parton curls, bedazzled catsuits and floating ostrich feather shoulder pads. One after the next, performers delivered captivating lip synchs and belted out hits blaring from the speakers as onlookers — several of them attending a drag show for the first time — cheered or sang along.

Presiding over it all was Miss Nature, a drag queen and organizer of the annual Arizona Pride Tour.

For the last four years, Miss Nature has been bringing drag shows to the small-town stages and backroad venues of some of Arizona’s most rural towns, hoping to create safe and joyful gathering spaces for local LGBTQ people, even if only for one night.

Though the show in Florence is the smallest on the tour with about 50 attendees, it is perhaps the most important for Miss Nature, whose everyday name is Chris Hall.

Hall, now 35, grew up as a gay teen in Florence and struggled to find a support system in the sparse, conservative town about 60 miles southeast of Phoenix. He was raised by his father, a corrections officer at a local prison, who was at one point so embarrassed by his son’s identity that he said he would make the 16-year-old walk dozens of feet behind him when they were in public.

“I know what it's like as a young, gay child not to have any support,” Hall told the audience of the May 10 show, adding he would often drive more than an hour to attend Pride events in Phoenix or Tucson. “Luckily, I was fortunate enough to be able to do that. Not everybody has the means, the accessibility to do that, and we lose too many lives because of that.”

Standing at the back of the show, nodding somberly as he scooped bags of popcorn for attendees, was the man teenage Chris never would have considered an ally: his father.

Terry, who was once — in his own words — “one of the worst parents” a gay child could have, is now one of Chris’ biggest supporters and fiercest defenders, helping his son confront a vocal contingent of people pushing back against his shows.

For years, Chris has allowed youth to attend many of his tour stops, hoping to provide spaces for those who may feel isolated in their communities. But the decision has led him — like many other American drag artists — to be targeted by conservative and religious groups who believe drag is inappropriate for minors, as well as some who seek to limit the public expression of LGBTQ people altogether. His shows this year attracted more than 1,000 attendees, but have also regularly drawn protesters, been challenged by local town councils and several have been violently threatened online.

The increasingly fraught environment has led Chris to make the difficult decision to stop allowing youth to attend next year’s tour — for now.

In the meantime, he hopes the shows can provide an outreached hand to parents just as they once did for Terry, who credits his transformed mindset to a life-changing conversation, a decade of reconciliation and a tentative wade into the world of drag.

Hours before the show began, Terry, Chris and Chris’ husband, Ronie, buzzed around each other in the banquet hall, nitpicking where to position sound equipment, strobe lights and folding tables. Terry, who was dressed in a custom Hawaiian shirt printed with Miss Nature’s face, now describes himself as a bit of a “helicopter dad,” a vast departure from the man he was when Chris was younger.

“I’ve never not loved him. I’ve always loved him. I would do anything for him, and I think he knows that,” Terry said. But he said he understands how deeply he hurt Chris in the past. “I was really bad.”

After Chris came out in high school, Terry reacted viscerally and began to recoil from being associated with his son in public. “I didn’t know how to handle it,” he said.

Chris said he still recalls arriving home after school one day to find a group of Pentecostal church members waiting for him inside — at Terry’s invitation — to urge the teen to give up on his “decision” to be gay or face an eternity in Hell. Shaking, Chris turned and ran from home.

It wasn’t until 2016 — when Chris was in his mid-20s and performing drag in Tucson — that Terry’s outlook was transformed by a conversation with a friend whose son had died that year.

“At least you can hug your son at night,” the friend told Terry.

Chris describes the following years as his father’s “second chapter,” when he says Terry began making a genuine effort to repair their fractured relationship. But Chris felt his father still held some deeply rooted misunderstandings about gay people, which would lead him to say or do things that would inadvertently hurt his son.

Terry seemed to make a “complete 180,” Chris said, when he began volunteering with the Arizona Pride Tour around 2021, which Chris believes is the first time Terry had significant interactions with LGBTQ people who weren't his son. For Terry, some of the most impactful stories came from those who had been thrown out of their homes for being gay or transgender.

“I never realized how many kids became homeless or suicidal because their parents shun them for being who they are,” Terry said.

As Terry hovered in the back of shows watching performers deliver carefully choreographed routines and uncanny celebrity impressions, he also found he had held misconceptions about what drag can look like.

“I had never been to the shows before and automatically had stereotyped. I thought it was going to be an adult show,” Terry said. “I didn't realize they're entertainers. They go from Freddie Mercury to Cher. It's remarkable the showmanship that they do.”

Terry, now retired, has become a fixture of Miss Nature’s tour, traveling as many as five hours to help run each show. Among some of the performers, he has been dubbed “Daddy Nature.”

As eager attendees drove up to the Florence show venue, many passed by a small group of church members congregating on the roadside, proselytizing from a loudspeaker and waving posters splashed with slogans including, “Is drag good for Florence?”

On the other side of the parking lot, Jeff Jordan watched them quietly from his truck in a shirt emblazoned with “PROUD DAD” in the colors of the transgender pride flag. Inside, his wife was helping his 12-year-old transgender daughter, June, prepare for her first drag performance.

Among the guests filing into the venue were Chris’ former elementary school principal and yearbook teacher, as well as Debbie Glenn, a grandmother of a nonbinary child who said she began seeking out Chris’ drag events to help her understand her grandchild’s identity.

As the show got underway, June — crowned with a tiara and waist-length scarlet wig — bounced in her seat as she watched Miss Nature usher in a string of performers alongside her co-host, Porcelain Christian.

The room swelled with anthems from “Tell It to My Heart” to “Born This Way” as the entertainers drew all eyes to the center of the room. Miss Nature, who doted on each table, pulled unsuspecting audience members, including her childhood friend, Tiffany, to face off in dance competitions and games.

Finally, the time came for June, whose stage name is Judy Davis, to step into the center of the room. As the first notes of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” blared from the speakers, she began to fly around the room, a flurry of skips, leaps, twists and cascading curls.

At the back of the room, her dad stood beaming with his hands on his wife’s shoulders as Judy Davis took flight. Chris invited June and her family, who are from neighboring Coolidge, to take part in the show.

At each tour stop, Chris tries to incorporate local performers and often collaborates with LGBTQ advocacy groups to provide information to attendees. Though Miss Nature’s 2026 tour will not allow minors to attend, Chris has plans to invite organizations that provide resources for LGBTQ youth, which he hopes adults may take home to young people in their lives.

“I want to continue holding to my morals, which is doing all-ages shows and showing that all-ages shows can happen,” Chris said. He requires performers at all-ages shows to have their music and outfits approved and asks them to keep their routines appropriate for younger audiences.

However, a large portion of Chris’ critics, he said, believe drag is inherently sexual and inappropriate for children and teens, and he feels efforts to stop his shows have become increasingly emboldened. This year, Chris decided to move his show out of the northern Arizona city of Cottonwood — where he has previously faced protests from far-right group the Proud Boys — after the city council agreed to discuss whether minors should be banned from drag shows. Even after he selected a new venue in neighboring Jerome, town officials fielded complaints from residents before deciding to permit the event.

Though Chris said no one has been harmed at any of his shows, scenarios like this have led him to temporarily stop admitting minors until he can invest in increased security measures like metal detectors. He also wonders whether protesters will continue to oppose his shows even when children are not present.

“If we let people know we live in fear, that's going to motivate them. So the thing is, for me, I don't ever want to be fearful. I don't back down,” he said.

After so much progress, some hurt still lingers between Chris and Terry, including Chris’ frustration over his dad’s votes for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024 despite Trump’s campaign promises to significantly roll back LGBTQ rights and protections.

But after Terry received a lung cancer diagnosis in 2022, Chris often weighs whether confronting their disagreements is worth the distance it may put back between them.

“My dad already has poor health. I already thought I was going to lose him a number of years ago (when one of his lungs collapsed). ... Is it necessarily worth my relationship knowing that he doesn't have much time?”

After Terry learned he had cancer, he decided he wanted to leave Chris with a moment that would always remind him of the depths of his father’s love.

“Besides wanting their child to be healthy, happy and make their dreams, parents always want that one special moment that child will always remember.”

Before telling Chris about his diagnosis, Terry told him he wanted to join Miss Nature onstage at Bumsted’s, a bar in Tucson where she regularly performs.

On the evening of their drag duet, Miss Nature and the other performers helped Terry into a teased-up auburn wig and floor-length floral dress. But as Terry stepped onto the stage, Miss Nature decided to hang back, letting him have a moment all to himself.

And there was Daddy Nature.

The audience roared and gave a standing ovation as Daddy Nature nervously clutched the front of his robe, which he soon had to let go of, as people rushed to the stage to fill his hands with cash tips.

Daddy Nature stood awestruck until Miss Nature joined him onstage and the pair turned to each other and mouthed the words to “Because of You” by Kelly Clarkson.

Chris chose the song with their journey in mind.

“I felt it was a way for me, knowing his story, to say: ‘Even though you've hurt me so much growing up ... I did learn from you. Because of you, I am who I am.”