Drag Performers Collect $100k Settlement From NH State Rep Who Smeared Them As Sex Offenders

Confirmation bias. It’s expensive. Just ask David Love, who has written out a $100,000 check to two drag performers for defamatory comments he made — more than once! — while supposedly serving his constituents in his position as a New Hampshire state rep.

New Hampshire residents Robert Champion, who performs under the stage name Monique Toosoon, and Michael McMahon, who performs under the stage name Clara Divine, filed the lawsuit in April 2022 after Rep. David Love (R-Derry) made public remarks about the performers that he later admitted were inaccurate. Champion and McMahon agreed to settle the lawsuit on Thursday, as the Manchester Ink Link first reported.

While testifying at a New Hampshire House committee meeting, Rep. Love falsely claimed that Champion was a convicted sex offender, according to a Boston Globe report. He also told the legislature that McMahon had been “rubbing butts” with kids during a family-friendly storytime event in 2021. 

This was stupid. How it got to this point is even stupider. We’ll move back down the timeline a step at a time. What prompted Rep. Love to deliver these statements while acting as a state rep? Well, it was a discussion over a bill he sponsored — one that would require background checks for public library employees. Why was this suddenly a necessity? Because Rep. Love firmly believed libraries were becoming honeypots for child molesters or something (it’s unclear from his words, so we’ll have to consider the context).

He expressed concerns about library events featuring drag queens. 

That’s one way of putting it. That’s the way Boston.com chose to put it. Another way to put it was that Rep. Love was expressing an irrational concern — one he supported with “information” passed on to him by other people. And he chose to pass it on as actual facts because he’s too impaired by his own bigotry to perform due diligence before making a $100,000 ass of himself in public.

We know this because the drag performers not only asked for $100,000 but a full retraction and apology from state rep David Love. And they got it. It’s this apology that shows Love was given some bullshit from someone else that he definitely wanted to believe was true because it confirmed his own biases. So, that’s what he chose to do: believe it and pass it on to others like the contagion it was.

After being provided with inaccurate information, information that I failed to verify, I publicly accused Robert Champion aka Monique Toosoon of being a registered sex offender and Michael McMahon aka Clara Divine of “rubbing butts” with children. I made those statements before the New Hampshire legislature. Those allegations were then repeated to Manchester Ink Link and before the Derry Town Council. I have since learned that those assertions were completely false. I wish to publicly retract those statements and apologize to Robert and Michael.

The question is: will he learn? More importantly, will others with the same biases learn anything from this themselves? Or will it just be another one of those things immediately buried under the next bit of misinformation people like Rep. Love choose to fill their brains with. Rep. Love has a $100,000 reminder which might make this stick. As for everyone else, it probably won’t even make them think twice.