We celebrated my husband’s 90th birthday at a drag show
Eighteen months ago for my husband’s 90th birthday, he, several of his children and I went to a drag show after church. Drag shows are nothing new for me. Two decades before I became an Episcopal priest, I was a social worker at Central Louisiana AIDS Support Services, where a gay bar sponsored a drag show to support our agency.
This was not Tom’s first drag show either. I indoctrinated him years earlier. He enjoyed it, so it seemed natural to attend a drag show to celebrate this momentous birthday. Unfortunately, I had not actually purchased show tickets, but the queens took pictures and sang to Tom – a perfect celebration, the majority thought. I later learned that two attendees were “very offended” by this. I immediately wondered, “Why?” Why would you be offended by drag queens? What has a drag Queen ever done to you? Drag queens are not harmful. However, it seems now that many feel threatened, or believe that their children are. My question remains, “Why?”
Why would you be offended by drag queens?
In the early 1990s people were not living with AIDS, they were dying horrible deaths from awful diseases. At this time my children were beginning elementary school. No, I did not take them to drag shows but I also didn’t let them watch PG movies or say phrases like “shut-up.” They did go with me when I visited my clients, some of whom were nearing death, and they spent a lot of time around drag queens and we never discussed it. There was no need to. These were people, people I worked with, I spent time with. People I loved. They were no different than the people I went to church with, or was on boards with, had lunch with – except that they were outcast.
I attended as many funerals in my years at CLASS as in my 21 years as an Episcopal priest. Several funerals ended with me in my car sobbing, not only because of the loss of another young person who should have
had a long, full life, but also because I, and all those gathered, heard another minister exclaim that the deceased was certainly in hell.
Jesus loves best those that others deem unworthy
I knew that was not true, that Jesus loves best those that others deem unworthy, but it broke my heart to know that many gathered would suffer the same indignity. I knew they needed to hear a different side of the story, the Gospel of Love from the Lord of Love. Jesus came to show us how to love each other. When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus responds: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. There is no room for condemnation of anyone in this commandment. There is no room for hatred or fear – only a command to love.
I still don’t know why folks are threatened by drag queens, or threatened by other folks at all, especially those we don’t know. Just love.
The Rev. Dr. Lee F. Shafer is the rector of Calvary Episcopal Church. She wrote this for the Louisville Courier Journal.