Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.
Yet again, just as they did last year, our county Republican party has taken aim at Grand Haven’s Pride Festival. Last week, Ottawa GOP published a document (newsletter, essay, editorial, screed?) entitled, “Something Must Change in Grand Haven Based on New 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Decision for Naples, FL.”
The heart of their claim is that the drag shows at the Grand Haven Pride Festival are “adult entertainment” and should be hidden behind closed doors (as was recently decided in Naples, Florida). As I read their disappointing and painful claims, the words of Humpty Dumpty from “Alice in Wonderland” kept running through my head: “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’”
And as much as the Ottawa GOP apparently wants to believe that a drag show is adult entertainment, just saying it is over and over again in your newsletter doesn’t make it so.
Perhaps some help from the dictionary can assist here. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines drag as “entertainment in which performers caricature or challenge gender stereotypes (as by dressing in clothing that is stereotypical of another gender, by using exaggeratedly gendered mannerisms, or by combining elements of stereotypically male and female dress) and often wear elaborate or outrageous costumes.”
The article included pictures of some of the drag performers, with an expression of alarm that children are there. However, the performers are not nude. They are not even scantily clad. The drag queen’s rear end in the photo they highlight is actually covered with tights in addition to her glittery costume. One wonders if they have walked the boardwalk in Grand Haven recently, because there is far more skin on display on the boardwalk than was ever displayed by performers at the Pride festival.
They seem unable to draw the distinction between medium and content. Drag is a medium of performance that can have a variety of content suitable to different ages. In the same way that all movies are not R-rated, not all drag performances are inherently adult-themed in content. The medium is simply performance art that bends gender expressions and expectations.
One does not have to read that far behind the lines to discern what their actual objection is: the fact that the performers are dressed in clothes from a gender other than the one they were presumably born into … and those performers are dancing. Not pole dancing. Just ... dancing.
It is precisely this kind of language – particularly raising claims of danger to children – that continues to put not only drag performers at risk but also trans and other gender non-conforming individuals. By portraying people who are not gender conforming as dangerous to children, they dehumanize and vilify anyone who is not gender conforming, insisting that this sort of thing simply has no place in the public square.
And when an official political party in our community takes up these attacks, they embolden other forms of transphobic hate. I wish the leadership of the Ottawa GOP would spend some time listening to the experience of trans and gender non-conforming people. Listen to Sadie, a member of my church, sob as she recounts people at her job calling her gross and leveling all sorts of insults at her. And her management does nothing, because the Ottawa GOP has already said people who are not gender conforming are dangerous to kids – so you are free to do anything you want to them.
I can show you screenshots of the vile, hateful, and violent attacks on our festival on social media. Let me share just a few comments that people made on content that was just telling people that the pride festival was coming:
Get hit by a bus.
Proud to be a child molester.
Nobody cares. Get the F&@ out of here.
Filth always. Pray the gay away.
I see attacks starting to happen with this kind of crap.
Demons.
There was one that was just an illustration of someone wiping their naked butt with a pride flag.
And what breaks my heart is that so many of these people claim to be followers of Jesus. I consider myself friends with several pastors in the area and I cannot imagine they would be encouraging their congregants to treat LGBTQIA+ people this way.
As we approach Independence Day holiday, I would urge the Ottawa GOP and the others who have attacked our festival to reflect upon what freedom means and what it means to cultivate a society in which people who do not fit their own gender norms or follow their own religious beliefs for sexual orientation are free to exist – not hidden behind an 18-plus payroll as though they are something prurient. But free to walk down the street, wearing the clothes that represent their own sense of gender identity, free to hold hands with the person they love, and not worrying about someone hurting them.
Sure, I know that the Grand Haven Pride festival may not be something the leadership of the Ottawa GOP will want to attend (though I think they would learn something if they attended and sought to listen to the lived experience of participants).
But it would be great if the party whose leadership changed our county motto to “Where freedom rings” also cared deeply about the freedom of LGBTQIA+ individuals.
It would be great if they cared about the freedom of families like mine who bring our kids to the festival because we want our kids to grow up knowing that it’s OK to be who you are – who God created you to be – and we want them to grow up in a community that doesn’t stigmatize those who are different.
Because kids are in danger, absolutely. The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently found that firearms remain the leading cause of death for children and teens. So, let’s have a conversation about how to balance freedom, the Second Amendment, and the safety of the seven children who die every day from gun violence.
And kids are in danger from hateful rhetoric that says it’s dangerous to break gender norms or have a different sexual orientation. That’s why 43 percent of LGBTQIA youth considered attempting suicide. It’s why 1 in 5 attempted it in the past year.
Kids are in danger, but it’s not from the Grand Haven Pride Festival and our drag shows. It’s from a culture addicted to violence and weapons that marginalizes, excludes, and attacks those who are different. And kids deserve to be protected from that.
The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com.
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