Before this year, I didn’t think much about drag shows.
If I thought of them at all, I regarded them perhaps like jai alai: Fun and exotic for folks who are into that but nothing I couldn’t live without.
Men dressing up as women for laughs or because they like silk undies. It’s a free country. Knock yourselves out.
So it was with passing interest that I followed the national debate over Drag Queen Story Hour, which in Ketchikan transpired into a public vote on whether to defund the public library. Depending on one’s perspective, Drag Queen Story Hour either is an assault on all that’s good and pure about America or it’s a small lesson in tolerating differences.
When I was growing up, learning to tolerate differences was a thing.
Our story hours were led by Sister Thomas Vincent, Sister Marie Leone and the other Sisters of Saint Francis.
These were women, as far as anyone could tell but it wasn’t exactly obvious as they were mostly wrapped in black and white burkas. Only their hands and the area between their eyebrows and Adam’s apples were exposed to the light of day.
Imagine a five-year-old entering first grade at Nativity Blessed Virgin Mary elementary school, leaving the safety and security of family and home to spend the day with a woman dressed like the Grim Reaper and presenting a similar countenance.
Most of us were terrified. Not to worry, our parents assured us. The sisters were saintly, they said. They would teach us and to help us. As most parents in the 1960s were not of the helicopter variety, ours weren’t too concerned about our actual treatment at the hands of the good sisters.
So it’s likely that none of them knew that in third grade, one of the sisters made a girl classmate wear a large sign that read “I Am A Baby” all day, including during recess. And my own parents never learned that in fifth grade another sister dragged me out of the classroom by my ear, marched me into the boys’ lavatory, grabbed me by the shoulders and beat my head against the wall, all for the sin of slouching at my desk.
I probably should have turned in that sister to the authorities but who would have believed me? I was up against the Catholic Church, which at the time was involved in much more heinous crimes against children than just a run-of-the-mill head-pounding like mine.
So I am trying my best to understand the threat posed by a man hilariously and obviously overdressed as a woman, reading some children’s books to children at the public library.
I am trying, but I’m not seeing it.
By the way, Ketchikan public library survived its electoral battle with its public funding intact, but the war of morals still rages there. In early July, the Ketchikan City Council heard two hours of public comment before voting 4-3 to move the book, “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships and Being Human” to the adult section of the public library.
It had been in the teen section, of all places.
History tells us that intolerance and book-banning are serious threats to a free nation and the power of religion as a form of mind control must be guarded against, always and continually. History tells us that intolerant ideas – for example, that some people are witches and must be crucified – have been discounted and discredited only to be revived as legitimate hundreds of years later.
What we’re seeing in real time are attempts to turn back progress on humility and understanding. History tells us that’s usually the pre-show to the next Dark Ages.
So maybe be okay with nice people who seem a little freaky. Try to get to know them a little and if they seem okay, learn to trust them.
It’s that or one day your great-grandchildren may be learning sex education from nuns.