Drag queens and proud boys

Up the hill from where we live—out in Chardon, Ohio—a restaurant and a church have teamed up to offer two drag events this coming Saturday. Their plans are causing some stir.

The restaurant is hosting two “Drag Brunches.” You have to be over 18 to attend and they are sold out. The church is sponsoring an afternoon “Drag Story Hour.” It is a ticketed event, but I don’t know much about it otherwise.

It has been reported that the Proud Boys are inviting members and sympathizers to show up to protest Saturday’s events. They threaten guns and violence. “It will be wild” one post promised. (Sound familiar?)

A few days ago, a call went out to area clergy and others to also come on Saturday to support the events, and to counter the Proud Boys. This morning the organizers are asking supportive folks who do not already have tickets to stay home on Saturday but to instead attend a prayer vigil tonight in Chardon. I believe it is a wise decision to let law enforcement deal with any protesters.

I do not know much about drag events. I think I may have gone to a drag show with seminary friends in San Francisco in the ‘60s. If so, I hardly remember it. I don’t know what’s involved in a drag brunch or story hour. Frankly, I don’t know much about drag culture, etc., at all, and hesitate to write anything about it.

I do know this, however: in an open society, people should be as free as possible to express themselves and their interests. Of course, individual freedom is not unlimited; we must live together. Competing freedoms need to be negotiated to assure that everyone’s freedom is allowed to the maximum extent possible while maintaining social cohesion. Doing this takes hard work and careful listening and even more carefully speaking. Shouting doesn’t help much.

I do not have to attend or even approve of drag events to hold that people who enjoy them should be able to. If they want to share them with others, that’s okay, so long as others remain free not to accept the offer. (You are free to avert your eyes when you happen upon Michelangelo’s David if it offends you.) So far as I know, the organizers of the events in Chardon this weekend are not forcing anyone to participate who does not want to.

Of course, children need to be protected from some things available to adults. But young people have access via the internet to far more troubling things than drag brunches and drag story hours, and there is no limit on what they might hear from one another. Vigilant as parents and others might be about what they don’t want their children to learn, they will learn it. Why not give them and their parents a chance to be open about all that’s out there, and discuss how it affects them and their understanding of themselves and of others? It is a healthier way to become adults than by being inhabited by secrets.

I’d like to see the Proud Boys hold a prayer vigil tonight, too, and stay home on Saturday. But since I don’t expect them to do that, I pray for Chardon and its safety and security forces, and that everyone enjoys the day however and wherever they choose to spend it.

With all that's good?

If you are not sufficiently shocked by yesterday’s killings in a Nashville church-sponsored elementary school, read this from this morning’s Heather Cox Richardson post:

In the wake of the shooting, Representative Andrew Ogles (R-TN), who represents Nashville thanks to redistricting by the Republican legislature that cut up a Democratic district, said he was “utterly heartbroken” by the shooting and offered “thoughts and prayers to the families of those lost.” 

In 2021, Ogles, his wife, and two of his three children held guns as they posed for a Christmas card with a caption that read: “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference—they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”

(I checked out the accuracy of Richardson’s report as best I could, and believe she has it right. Strangely, the caption is sometimes attributed to George Washington, but likely erroneously.)

Christian friends: if you attend a church that believes that “firearms…deserve a place of honor with all that’s good” you need to find a new church.

If your church’s minister preaches that “firearms…deserve a place of honor with all that’s good” your church needs a new preacher.

If you think Jesus would agree that “firearms…deserve a place of honor with all that’s good” you need to read the gospels.

And if you cannot imagine a Jesus who wouldn’t honor guns, you need a new savior.

(BTW, even if it was George Washington who said that, it is just plain wrong.)

What's at stake

Last weekend, our granddaughters were in the Oneonta, New York, High School production of Beauty and the Beast. We were there to see them and to celebrate their latest accomplishments. It is thrilling to watch them maturing, a sometimes rocky journey that benefits from appreciative and appropriate adult guidance along their way.

      To me, student plays have a layer that may not be so apparent in professional productions. In acting, a young person takes on a role that may or may not bear any resemblance to who they are. It can be a guided experiment into alternatives that may confirm their personalities and priorities, or that may suggest options to consider as they continue toward adulthood.

What student actors do during hours of rehearsals and for a couple of hours on stage is, I suspect, parallel to what many more do daily in the school’s halls and classrooms. They seem to try on various roles or personas to see what they feel like in what may be conscious or unconscious real-life play acting. If I dress like this, talk like that, dye my hair blue, express an opinion I know many will not understand…if I do these kinds of things somewhere outside my comfort zone, what will happen? What will I learn about me, and about other people? How will I feel?

Many characters or characteristics young people try in seeking to discover who they are obviously don’t fit, and get discarded pretty fast. Others immediately fit perfectly. And some may take years to settle into their lives.

During intermission, I looked at some art work on display in the school’s hallway. Here again young people seemed to be trying on ways of seeing the world, particularly its human inhabitants. I saw experimentation, guided by experienced adults who knew how to help a young person express themselves artistically, just as experienced adults had helped Beauty and the Beast come to life. In looking at another person in a some particular way, perhaps some of those budding artists saw glimpses of themselves that might otherwise never have surfaced, or perhaps surfaced in ways harmful to themselves or to others. A self-portrait can be particularly telling.

Suddenly, I felt I was seeing the kinds of self-discovery experiences that the heavy hands of some politicians and legislators are trying to squash. Guided by particular conceptions of what “ought to be,” some who would lead our country into the future seek to limit what students can see and do in order to make sure they come to the same understandings of themselves and this world that people with power have come to. They do not trust teachers or counselors or medical professionals to be capable of appropriate guidance as young people go through these formative years of their lives. Some who know little about how people happily grow and develop take it upon themselves to make laws to assure outcomes they believe should fit everyone, no matter how much they pinch.

What’s at stake here is students’ futures as individuals and ours as a people. Are they and are we truly free if someone who doesn’t know us at all is telling us what we can read, what we can learn, and who we can be? Of course not.

Education is not indoctrination. Indoctrination is what extremists from left and right seek to lay upon others. Education is what good teachers, counselors, and medical professionals offer to those in their charge. Let them do their jobs. The overwhelming majority of them have no interest other than what will best allow and prepare young people to live fulfilling lives as citizens in our United States.