Mike Starkey writes: In recent years drag has gone mainstream. Actually, it’s bigger than that. Drag has become all-conquering, ubiquitous, the performance art of the moment.
The art of cross-dressing for entertainment has a long history, often confined to spaces frequented by consenting adults. By the late 20th century in Britain, drag was drawing an enthusiastic subculture to gay bars such as London’s Vauxhall Tavern, where Lily Savage (aka Paul O’Grady) became a cult figure. O’Grady consciously built on a gentler British tradition of cross-dressing in pantomime, music hall and TV comedy (think Alastair Sim, Danny La Rue, Hinge & Bracket, Dick Emery, Les Dawson). In the UK, cross-dressing has always had a strong association with comedy. This seam was mined to great effect by Australian comic Barry Humphries’ Dame Edna Everage—in Humphries’ case, affectionately satirising suburban life, snobbery and the cult of celebrity.
But in the past couple of decades drag has broken out of its comedy and gay bar niche and conquered the world. This is thanks in no small part to RuPaul’s Drag Race and its many TV and stage spin-offs, as well as the promotion of Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) in libraries and galleries, in which drag performers read children’s books to young audiences.
The recent rise of drag has been accompanied by a rhetoric of personal empowerment and self-discovery, carried along on a tidal wave of gender theory. The latest stride in drag’s inexorable, high-heeled advance has been, improbably, into church.
Church Camp
A few sparkly highlights of the recent arrival of drag in church—in case you have missed them.
Flamy Grant
In late July 2023 the Christian world awoke to unexpected news. For the first time, a drag artist had topped the iTunes Christian Music charts. Flamy Grant (a play on popular Christian singer Amy Grant) is the drag name of US worship leader Matthew Blake. Blake’s collaborator is Derek Webb, former vocalist of the band Caedmon’s Call. Webb’s spiritual journey has taken him from the evangelical world, through a period of post-evangelical questioning, to a restless post-Christian position. His honesty about his own faith questions is commendable. Despite his loss of faith, Webb still calls his latest album his ‘first Christian and Gospel album in a decade’.
The lead single from Flamy Grant’s album, Good Day, has been a surprise hit—propelled to the top of the download charts by an audience of inclusive Christians, members of the drag and gay communities, and a general audience who like a hummable song with an empowerment, ‘just be yourself’ message.
Blake and Webb join forces on one of Webb’s own songs, Boys Will Be Girls. In the video, Webb is made up in drag inside a church, complete with dress, lurid make-up and false eyelashes. Blake and Webb both wear towering, 80s-Bible-Belt-evangelist’s-wife-style wigs.
St James’s Piccadilly and St Mark’s Southend
On 21 July 2023 the Church Times, Britain’s leading Anglican newspaper, published an interview with Elijah Kinne, events manager at St James’s Piccadilly in central London. The photo accompanying the piece was as far removed from a typical Church Times photo as a bemused Archdeacon could imagine. Kinne, a drag queen for 10 years, wears full make-up, with vast tracts of black eyeshadow above the eyes, dark lipstick and a peroxide wig.
A long way from the American Deep South where Kinne grew up, his alter ego Barbara now performs in pubs and Soho bars. Kinne also has a brief to foster the church’s inclusive vision of Christian faith. St James’s Piccadilly hosts a drag night called Preach! This is billed as ‘a sparkling evening’, which ‘welcomes drag icons from around the world to perform beneath its ornate gold ceiling, showcasing some of the biggest names in the art of drag, as well as fresh talent.’
In spring 2023 another Church of England Church, St Mark’s Southend, hosted what it described as an ‘age-appropriate’ show for children by drag artist Matt Hunt, aka Queen Kenzie Blackheart. This event hit the headlines locally and nationally because of the protests that accompanied it.
Greenbelt Festival
At the end of August 2023 the annual Greenbelt Festival, which had evangelical roots but now identifies as inclusive Christian, will host a School of Drag for children: ‘Through quick drag catwalks, arts and crafts, and Drag Story Time, the School of Drag is the perfect introduction to queer art for youngsters, giving them a chance to enjoy LGBTQ+ stories, meet Drag artists and express themselves creatively in a safe space.’
Drag Church
Drag Church is now joining the inventory of new missional expressions of church, such as Messy Church, Café Church and Forest Church, in contextualising mission for particular groups in a diverse society. One Drag Church states that it
provides a nonjudgmental sacred space for people to express themselves proudly, through drag performances and other creative expressions of spirituality… Worship in drag is permission-granting, encouraging individuals to be their authentic selves, exactly as God intended them to be.
Some Christians are delighted the church is being dragged kicking and screaming into the postmodern world, and see the embrace of drag as Spirit-inspired and liberating. Others look on aghast, wondering what Teresa of Ávila, John Wesley and John Henry Newman would have made of it all. What you see depends on which window you look through.
Windows on Drag
Here are a few of the windows different groups of people might look through when they observe drag in the church:
1 Empowerment
Advocates say drag is about empowerment, enabling a group of people historically alienated from church to express the true identity they find in the culture of drag. It’s about creating safe spaces for authenticity. Derek Webb sees Christian drag as incarnational, ‘Jesus standing with the marginalized and the cast-out and the rejected’. Drag Church is seen as a safe space, a missional movement, and an expression of Christian social justice.
2 Queering Faith
At the risk of stating the obvious, the word queer no longer means odd, and is no longer a slur against a gay person. Queer has been reclaimed as a proud label of identity and a term for anybody or anything at odds with traditional sexual norms. ‘Queering’ is the process of disrupting inherited binary categories seen as imposed and restrictive, and forms an important part of today’s gender theory. From the perspective of queer theology, drag events are deliberate acts of queering church space, unsettling rigid moral assumptions historically associated with church. Queering is seen as an overdue act of reimagining.
3 Decadence
One reason Flamy Grant and Derek Webb’s faith-inspired drag reached such a wide audience was the shocked reaction across the Christian community, particularly in the US. Worship leader Sean Feucht tweeted his 100,000 followers:
If you’re wondering the end goal of the deconstruction movement in the church, then look no further than former worship leader Derek Webb’s new collab with a drag queen. These are truly the last days.
Feucht leads worship at the doctrinally and politically conservative Bethel Church in California. But many Christians from across the church traditions share his view that drag feels very like decadence. To them, it looks more like something from the debauched courts of the Emperor Nero than the early Church, more like a detail from the Hell section of a Hieronymus Bosch triptych than the artist’s image of Heaven.
The charge of decadence does not come uniquely from Christians. American academic Camille Paglia (herself gender non-conforming) sees civilisations through history periodically collapsing into decadence. As a dying culture unravels during its late phase, she says, one of its clearest markers is an ‘anything goes’ approach to sex and gender, a blurring of all boundaries.
A friend of mine, who wouldn’t describe herself as a practising Christian, puts it in less epochal terms—but still sees the explosion of drag as decadent self-obsession:
What I’d really like is for people to stop obsessing about, and being manipulated about, first world problems of gender… and start concentrating on wealth inequality and the destruction of the planet.
4 Children: Binaries and Boundaries
Some critics focus on the overt attempt to normalise drag through Drag Queen Story Hour in libraries and other family drag events. Queer theorists present these events as an overdue challenging of binaries among a younger generation. Others suspect more sinister motives behind the push for access to children, seeing it as a deliberate erosion of protective boundaries.
Men dressed as eroticised women throwing out sexual double-entendres does seem an odd way to educate young children about anything. In 2022, London’s National Theatre hosted family drag performances at its River Stage Festival. Drag queen Ms Sharon Le Grand announced from the stage that children should be taught to ‘open their minds, open their hearts and open their legs’. This did nothing to dispel fears among some parents and grandparents that drag for kids may conceal other agendas.
Drag events for children provoke legitimate red-flag safeguarding questions, such as:
- If children’s spaces are sexualised, who benefits?
- How can a man with even minimal self-awareness not see that putting on lipstick and a frock to gain access to young children looks creepy?
Organisers of the events say it’s all about inclusion. But inclusion never seems to mean library readings by disabled people, migrants, elderly people, poor people, homeless people, people from faith groups, terminally ill people or people with learning difficulties. Or actual women, for that matter.
In any case, if the issue is LGBTQIA+ inclusion, just how representative are drag queens of that wildly diverse (and often mutually prickly) collective? Are they more representative than a lesbian nurse or bisexual journalist? Asexual Actuary Story Hour still seems as remote a prospect as ever. Or why not celebrate inclusion by inviting a woman to dress as a man and act out clichés of toxic masculinity, while reading books to children? If not, why is this unacceptable? Inclusion à la Drag Queen Story Hour seems limited to adult men performing a gaudy, sexualised parody of women. In reality, then, not so much inclusion—more normalising drag. And the nature of drag sends out its own messages to children: about the dignity or otherwise of being female.
That leads directly to our final window on drag.
5 Women’s Dignity and Rights
For me, and for many others, one of the most significant features of drag is what it communicates about women’s dignity and rights. A key term used by some critics is ‘womanface’.
Drag as Womanface
When I was growing up in 1970s Warwickshire, another local resident was a singer on TV’s Black and White Minstrel Show, a variety show featuring old-time American-style minstrel songs. A white man, every week he would blacken up his face for the show. I felt deeply uneasy about it at the time, and was glad when the show was cancelled years later as racist. White people in blackface is rightly seen today as a demeaning caricature of black people.
I don’t see drag as a sign of the end-times. But I do see it as womanface—a demeaning, sexualised parody of women. The fact that blackface is today seen as evil, while womanface is seen as liberating and authentic, to be encouraged, celebrated and funded, feels bizarre and offensive. It is explicable only by one word: misogyny. Ah, but this is hip, ironic, postmodern misogyny, as opposed to that ol’ time misogyny.
Drag culture today has become significantly more sexualised since the heyday of Les Dawson, Danny La Rue and Dame Edna. Gone is the family-friendliness of the panto dame or a Mrs Doubtfire. Today’s drag shows tend to involve grotesque pastiches of sexualised womanhood—thick clownish make-up, extravagantly bouffant hair, exaggerated breasts, sexualised costumes including kink and fetish gear, burlesque-style routines, suggestive gestures, jokes about female biology, and stage-names that are often highly offensive. It’s very much an adult form of entertainment.
The popularity and omnipresence of drag in the media is a serious issue for our culture. It’s also a serious issue for the church, which doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to respecting women’s voices, agency, dignity and full personhood down the centuries. What is the church communicating when the latest trend in theology and contextual mission is a sexualised parody of a group of people who bear the brunt of male violence? In the UK alone, the number of women killed by men averages one every three days, and countless more are injured.
TV, social media, and now some Christian media, carry heartwarming stories of drag artists ‘being their true selves’ and ‘living their best lives’. No doubt this is sincerely felt by those involved in drag. But when being your true self and living your best life involves a cruel parody of a historically oppressed group, society has a problem, and the church has a problem. When being your true self and living your best life involves the sexualisation of young children, society has a problem, and the church has a problem.
From Fundamentalism to Drag
Flamy Grant reflects in interviews on the long journey from Christian fundamentalism to drag. But the journey from fundamentalism to drag isn’t as long as Flamy Grant imagines. Both have a tendency to peddle regressive caricatures of women.
Mike Starkey is a London-based writer, formerly Head of Church Growth for Manchester Diocese. He blogs at Flaneur Notes.
Note: from next week I will accept pseudonymous comments but no more anonymous comments.
I enjoyed the ‘old’ comics that sometimes dressed up, like Alastair Sim and Les Dawson. They could be very funny. And that was the point, it was done for comic effect.
These days it seems more about men who want to be women, or at least dress as women in an exaggerated form. But they should ask themselves – why am I rejecting my maleness?
Peter
These days it seems more about men who want to be women, or at least dress as women in an exaggerated form.
This confuses me. I understood a drag artist to be a man dressing up as a woman. But if the man thinks he is a woman, and therefore (we are told) we have to accept that he ‘is’ a woman, then surely what you’ve got is… a woman dressing up as a woman? What’s ‘drag’ about that?
S
Most Drag Queens are gay men, some are straight men and some fall into other categories.
Drag is about extreme fashion and performing as a diva character.
Drag is not the same thing as trans.
Trans people are people who experience normal life being a gender at odds with their birth sex. Drag is a performance.
@ PC1
Nowadays, this is a part of being “queer”; its an an identity label and a point of pride and celebration. Academic “scholars” use the word queer to define radical social theories aimed at promoting non-traditional sexuality and undermining heterosexuality. Queering is intended to complicate and disrupt what is perceived to be normal; the use of words, actions, or representatives to directly challenge heterosexuality, traditional gender roles, and the male/female binary.
Here is how queering is defined in the “Encyclopaedia of Diversity and Social Justice” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015):
Romans 1 and Jude 1 anyone?
@ Catherine M
Yes, the joke was that these performers were clearly men.
Who can forget Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough as Cissie Braithwaite and Ada Sidebottom?
Remember Kenny Everett? He didn’t bother to shave off his beard. Today, Everett would be seen as transphobic. Unless he had come out as non-binary or transgender!
Kenny Everett was classic. His take off of Rod Stewart and the Bee Gees never fails to reduce me to hysterics.
Thank you so much for presenting this point.
I suspect it may be an age-related view, but it’s one I follow and I don’t think it’s been articulated or acknowledged. If you take the silly cross-dressing of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot….it was for a comedic plot line. Not ever insinuated that they LIKED or PREFERRED dressing that way. Dame Edna, too. Just a joke.
But it has taken a definitely different turn these days. It has become a great deal more sexualized, first of all (sure, Tony had great legs, but would he ever try to compete with Marilyn? Would Dame Edna lol?). And second of all, like most things these days…it is yet another “cause”.
How’s your sanctification going, Catherine ?
God bless you.
PC1
It’s still for comic effect. It’s just you dont like gay men.
Im gay myself so that’s not true. However I think many gay men dislike the effeminate which drag queens take to the extreme.
And I dont think today’s drag queens do it for comic effect, as they seem to take themselves very seriously. They may be trying to be entertaining but few make others laugh.
There are lots of comedians I don’t find very funny. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t trying to entertain.
Just because dislike effeminate men doesn’t mean it’s all a plot to hurt you
I didnt say it’s all a plot to hurt me. But few would equate drag queens with comedians.
I don’t particularly feel entertained by Drag either, but I think it’s absurd to claim that they have some secret sinister purpose or plan because you personally don’t get it.
I also don’t “get” modern art, but I don’t make up nonsense scare stories about modern artists
but I think it’s absurd to claim that they have some secret sinister purpose or plan
Oh, they don’t have any secret plan, instead they’re quite open about what their sinister purpose is: it’s to expose children to sexual material from an early age in order to bring them up without sexual inhibitions.
There’s no secret, they are open and honest about their intentions.
S
Most Drag Queens have zero contact with children. Drag is not a strip show.
Most Drag Queens have zero contact with children.
So you’d be fine with banning Drag Queen Story Time then? Which is all the protestors want.
S
I think banning performances in front of children where a performer is dressed as the opposite sex is ridiculous and unnecessary.
I am all in favor of banning sexual content for young children, but that would not include Drag Queen storytime
in front of children where a performer is dressed as the opposite sex is ridiculous and unnecessary.
Fortunately no one has suggested that.
I am all in favor of banning sexual content for young children, but that would not include Drag Queen storytime
So you think children being read to by an character called ‘Flowjob’ is not sexual content, do you?
S
You say nobody has suggested that, but that’s what the Drag bans in the states require. Fortunately they are on hold pending judicial review due to their broad nature.
I don’t honestly know if I’d class the name “Flowjob” as sexual content or not (is that from a book?), but it’s clearly not involved in all DQ story times. So no I would not make all DW story times illegal
A word especially in season :
“But mark this : There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, WITHOUT SELF-CONTROL, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, LOVERS OF PLEASURE rather than lovers of God – HAVING A FORM OF GODLINESS BUT DENYING ITS POWER.”
2 Timothy 3:1-5a.
When I first became a Christian at university I persuaded a new Christian friend and her friend to go see The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the local cinema – bad idea. I had enjoyed it the previous year, when I wasnt a believer, as the students would throw rice and squirt water pistols at key scenes in the film. It was fun particularly doing the Time Warp Again (!), but when I took my new Christian friends, they sat stony-faced, probably in shock at Dr Frank N Furter in suspenders! But I smile when I think about it now, Im sure their eyes were opened (they were Scottish Free Ps)!
But Im not sure Id recommend it today…
Almost Unbelievable.
not really, it’s called being a student.
I’m sorry – I thought at the time you were claiming to be a “Christian” ?
Yes but a new one…
I’ll let you off, then, PC.
God bless.
Yes but it was an extremely ‘adult’ show. Or at the least, marketed to young adults for more of a party atmosphere. Not meant for kids.
indeed.
As a social issue this is major, but a theological issue it is not. It is just another manifestation of worldly culture getting into the church. Those churches which promote it will wither and be pruned from the vine.
cf. Ephesians 2:1-5.
Quite a lot of Anglican Bishops wear frocks.
No, they where normal dress from a different time and place. Visit Morocco today and you will find this is standard dress for men.
Ian
You’ve surely got to see the irony of men in silly hats and flowing garments telling gay men that drag is evil?!
For once, we agree!
As long as Christians opt out of making culture, their only option will be to copy what non-Christians are doing (usually whatever was considered innovative 30 years ago).
How do you make culture?
Blue Mink, started with a “Melting Pot”. A great big melting pot was all that was needed.
Such permissive, callow, naive idealism.
That’s not true, for in the New Testament the church is set in contrast with ‘the world’, meaning the prevailing culture at any particular time and place. Even historic Western culture has merely been a place where people believed the Bible was factually true, rather than a place where the majority let God change their hearts. Give me a time and place that you believe was a Christian culture and I will give you back its institutional and entrenched cruelties. In England 600 years ago, which of the Lollards and the Catholicism was, by biblical standards, the church, and which was the world?
Couldnt the likes of Steve’s creativity influence culture?
Dont books like Tolkien’s LOTRs or Lewis’ TLTWATW influence culture?
Peter, I wish!
But I know my limits.
I’m working on a piece at mo. called, provisionally, Deception or Perception.
Viewed from the front one sees Jacob’s peeled, and spotty willow, poplar and plane wands which he used to attempt to deceive Laban with. Viewed from the left one sees a white lamb’s face, viewed from the right one sees a black lion’s face. The wording is loosely from 2 Corinthians 2:15, Fragrance of life/stench of death.
To some God is percieved as a black lion, to others He looks like a lamb.
…Do not be decieved the devil is a roaring lion.
At His right are pleasures for evermore
He will separate the sheep from the goats
etc
it all adds up, Steve.
Not much, I reckon. They are read by people who already want to read books like that.
The modern state differs from the medieval state in that it claims complete independence from all authority other than its own. Democracy authority is the rule of the majority. The Christian medieval state regarded itself as part of Christendom and bound by the faith, morals and arrangements of Christianity. The Catholic Church’s claim to hold divine authority in matters of faith and morals was accepted and rulers ordered society accordingly. The state saw it’s authority as coming from God. and its accountability was to God. There was a division between the spiritual and the temporal order.
This absolutism of the modern state began in the sixteenth century with the affirmation of the Protestant princes that their power was not responsible to Christendom or its officers, but independent of them. It had its immediate fruit in what was called “the divine right of kings,” where the claim of a modern government—whether monarchical or republican—to undivided allegiance became.
The medieval states considered themselves to be Catholic societies and considered themselves to be justified by Catholic principles to fight the beginnings of disruption within its own body. Justified in making Catholic ideas, education, morals, etc. the rule within a Catholic state. Justified in trying to prevent the breakup of a Catholic society such as Europe had been for many hundred years, and to save the unity of its civilization. A Catholic nation, a Catholic civilization, had a right to check what threatened to destroy it; just as the state based on ownership has a right to check by force communism or theft.
To read you, one would think that mediaeval Catholic states lived in happy peace with each other while everybody else went to war against each other or against Catholic states. That is nonsense, of course. William the Conqueror’s offspring engaged entire countries to fight each other ruthlessly for his legacy. Catholic England and Catholic France fought the 100 Years War. The Habsburg-Bourbon wars were betwen Catholic countries.
And the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ was nowhere more energetically pursued than in absolutist Catholic France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The idea was not a Protestant aberration.
Jack is in very good form when he talks about Natural Law but he loses the plot when he strays into post-Reformation politics.
@ James
Before the Reformation the king, anointed by the Church, was, within seen as the vicar of God for temporal purposes; the only human power capable of deposing the king was the pope. After the Reformation, the king became absolute ruler for spiritual religious purposes too. This was the main issue in the English Civil War. The Royalists held that Christian kings derive their authority direct from God; the Parliamentarians that this authority is the outcome of a contract between sovereign and people.
With the rise of nation-states and the Protestant Reformation, the theory of Divine Right justified the king’s absolute authority in both political and spiritual matters. The theory came to the fore in England under the reign of King James I (1603–25). King Louis XIV of France (1643–1715), though Catholic, strongly promoted the theory as well.
In France, under Louis XIV, the religion of the state was Catholic, however the popes had no major influence in France as bishops and archbishops were appointed by the French king. It was Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Catholic Bishop of Meaux and court preacher to Louis XIV, who promoted the Divine Right of Kings. Louis XIV agreed with him …. it conformed with his own ideal of himself as an absolute ruler: the so-called “Sun King.” However, he ignored Bousseut’s preaching regarding Christian conduct and morality. In France, the theory was not overthrown until the French Revolution.
Note to HJ,
What you say about the bishops to the Sun King seems a very similar description of Eric Metaxas and Lance Wallnau sucking up to the new Orange Sun King!
After the Reformation, the king became absolute ruler for spiritual religious purposes too. This was the main issue in the English Civil War. The Royalists held that Christian kings derive their authority direct from God; the Parliamentarians that this authority is the outcome of a contract between sovereign and people.
Jack, you are conveniently forgetting the very different settlement between church and state in Orthodox lands after the schism of 1054. Also, there were two main issues in the English civil war, neither being as you say. They were the historic right of Parliament to be involved in taxation policy, which Charles I was trampling on; and freedom of protestant worship; the Puritans simply wished to worship as they pleased, not according to Charles and Laud’s ‘high’ liturgy exclusively. At the start Parliament had no thought of governing without a king but simply wanted these wrongs addressed, yet on persisting with its demands it found it was up against a monarch who, in violation of his Coronation Oath, was determined to assert his right to do anything he pleased. Both sides proved willing to escalate to the point of civil war. Even after Charles had lost the first phase of fighting, Parliament was willing to treat with him; but then he secretly and treacherously called down an invasion of England from his other nation, Scotland. He lost that too and was justly charged with treason and executed. I look forward to the film (The Thorn in the Crown) recently announced to me made about the great reforming lawyer, John Cooke, who prosecuted him and was hung drawn and quartered at the Restoration.
Charles was from a Scottish dynasty and in Scotland Parliament was weaker, the church stronger politically, than in England. Charles and his father failed to realise that but his father was a wiser man.
The philosophical issues you refer to were rationalisations written during and after the fighting. The real issues were taxation and freedom of protestant worship.
Anton;
Are you trying to say that Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism have English blood on their hands ?
Please don’t put words in my mouth! I am saying that although individual Christians should be in politics wherever they can be, the church as a body should not be. It then invariably dirties itself chasing after political power. The church’s business is to assist people in being changed for the better by Jesus Christ in ways they cannot do for themselves. That is not a political process in any way and it cannot be fostered by one.
@ Anton
Pope Francis agrees with you!!!
In an interview in 2021, Pope Francis made the point that the basic message of the Church must be to promote a desire to follow Jesus and to embrace His salvific message. In the West, many of the hot-button moral teachings of the Church are typically accepted only by those already motivated by a desire to live out the Christian faith.
Pope Francis is teaching that a person must first accept the basic principles of the faith before they will embrace its more difficult moral teachings.
In Evangelii Gaudium, Francis tells us that we need to be careful about how we present the Catholic faith. He explained that “In today’s world of instant communication and occasionally biased media coverage, the message we preach runs a greater risk of being distorted or reduced to some of its secondary aspects. In this way certain issues which are part of the Church’s moral teaching are taken out of the context which gives them their meaning.”
Catholics who oppose abortion, homosexual marriage, transgenderism, euthanasia, etc,; know how they are portrayed by the media and how their positions and motives have been distorted. This has increased as opposition to these issues has become more closely associated with conservative politicians – the “culture war” against progressive “wokism”
Pope Francis continued, “The biggest problem is when the message we preach then seems identified with those secondary aspects which, important as they are, do not in and of themselves convey the heart of Christ’s message. We need to be realistic and not assume that our audience understands the full background to what we are saying, or is capable of relating what we say to the very heart of the Gospel which gives it meaning, beauty and attractiveness.”
When Church leaders become known for lashing out publicly at political figures and rowing with one another, (regardless of their justifications for doing so), they project an image of the Church as an enclave for ideologues to outsiders while fostering a “bunker mentality” among its members. Those who are not attracted to life in the bunker are pushed to the margins or give up on the Church altogether.
In Evangelii Nuntiandi, St. Paul VI wrote ?“This question of ‘how to evangelise’ is permanently relevant, because the methods of evangelising vary according to the different circumstances of time, place and culture.”
I think that, under a dictator who persecuted Christians and homosexuals, the two would get on rather well – because real Christians will “love the sinner while hating the sin” and there would be no argument about what the law should be, as it is not up for grabs as in a democracy.
Anton;
That’s exactly the same conclusion that Anglican vicar, Dr. Herbert Carson (St. Paul’s church, Cambridge) came to, when he started checking his Anglican beliefs against the Bible. He also came to conviction that, hitherto, he had never been Scripturally baptized (“Farewell to Anglicanism”, published in 1969; by Herbert Carson).
I’ve read his book The Faith of the Vatican, which is good.
cf. Eph. 2:1-5.
It’s all about the churches being “inclusive”, “welcoming”, “overcoming hurt,” and “engaging in conversation.”
These events are certainly not intended to be stunts to virtue signal “respect” for those with minority “sexual identities,” or controversial ways to show off their fostering of the values of “diversity” and “tolerance.” No, no. They nail their “rainbow colours to the mast” to let us know they are “true evangelists,” reaching out to the “hurt and excluded” and to prove “the church is for everyone.” It’s about “positive affirmation of the love of God and neighbour.”
It’s only “neo-Nazis,” “Pharisees” and “homophobes” who object.
Oh, and did Happy Jack mention they also fill the coffers of churches with money from paying audiences?
Dear Happy Jack;
Your attempts to to nullify the words of Christ have been responded to on the previous post.
@ Pellegrino
Indeed … more Hellenistic-Judaic nonsense from you!
‘nonsense’?
@ Ian
Yes.
Nonsense, when applied uncritically to New Testament Christology and used to equate Christ to Moses which both Josephus and Philo do. Both, in different ways and elusive ways, assign Moses the status of “divine man” which has a distinct meaning in Hellenistic-Jewish thought. It’s certainly not the God Incarnate of Christianity. The New Testament portrayal of Jesus is very different to a “divine man Christology” which is what Pellegrino seems to be peddling in his comment.
Dear Happy Jack;
Once again, you’ve completely got hold of the wrong end of the stick !
However, I forgive you, but please try not to do it again…
@ Pellegrino
Then do answer Jack’s question which he has repeatedly put to you:
Who do you Jesus Christ is?
Dear Happy Jack :
Jesus is Whom He explicitly said that He was, when He was accused by the Jews of claiming to be ‘God’, in John 10:33-6. This concurs with what Peter, via direct revelation from the Father, said Jesus was (Matthew 16:13-17), and with what Paul said Jesus was, when he first began preaching (Acts 9:20) And with what John in his original Gospel conclusion (John 20:31), said Jesus was :
Jesus is the Son of the Living God, and the Messianic Lord (cf. Psalm 110:1; Masoretic Text; cf. Acts 2:36). Jesus was directly Fathered by His God (Rev. 3:2, 12; Luke 1:35), via Mary. As God’s direct Son, Jesus fully manifested His Father – the Father alone, being the only [Gk. monon] true God (John 17:1-3; John 14:5-11 = John 20:28; John 20:31).
@ Pelegrino
Well, we know that before the Resurrection and Pentecost, Peter and the Apostles did not comprehend who Jesus was. That’s why Jesus rebuked him.
in John 10:33-6, Jesus is quoting Psalm 82:6, where God Himself refers to the “princes” of Israel as “gods” inasmuch as they represent God to His people: “I say, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men, and fall like any prince.’” Then He added: “what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world?”
The Hebrew word used for God here is Elohim, which is the most common word used for God in the Old Testament. Indeed, in Exodus and elsewhere in the Old Testament, we have multiple examples of people of God, judges in particular, being referred to as “gods” (see Exodus 22:8, twice in 22:9, and Psalm 82:1).
The idea is that rulers in Israel wield God’s authority as judges and as such are “gods.” In the New Testament Christians are joined more radically to God through Jesus Christ so that they share even more profoundly in prerogatives that belong to God alone in a strict sense. Here is a brief list of only some of them:
God alone is “Father” in a strict sense, according to Matthew 23:9, yet many among the people of God are referred to and named “fathers” via participation in God. See Luke 16:24, Acts 7:2, 1 John 2:13-14, Eph. 3:14-15, 1 Cor. 4:14-15.
Christ alone is “teacher” according to Matthew 23:8 (Greek, didaskolos), yet many among God’s people are called to be “teachers” in Him. See James 3:1, Ephesians 4:11, etc.
Christ alone is our “shepherd and bishop” (Greek, poimaine and episkopos) according to 1 Peter 2:25, yet we have many “shepherds” and “bishops” in the New Covenant, the Church. See Ephesians 4:11, 1 Timothy 3:1, Acts 20:28, etc.
Christ alone is our “leader” (Greek, kathegetes) according to Matthew 23:10, yet we have many “leaders” in the Church (Heb. 13:17, 24).
Those who participate in that which belongs to God alone in a strict and infinite sense, participate in God through a gift of grace. The same can be said for us Christians as “sons of God.” Christ alone is the “only begotten Son” according to John 1:18; 3:16, etc.; yet Christians are called “sons of God” and “born of God” in Galatians 4:4-7, Romans 8:14-17, 1 John 3:9, 1 John 5:18, etc.
In fact, even in the Old Testament angels are referred to as “sons of God” in Job 1:6, and sons of Seth were called “sons of God” in Genesis 6:4 – via participation and not by nature.
The New Covenant reveals Christians to be sons of God not only through participation but even more intimately and radically via adoption. Christ alone is “Son” by nature, but it is entirely proper and biblical to refer to all of the above as “sons.”
With all of this in mind, we can see how texts of Scripture that proclaim there to be only one true God – John 17:3, 1 Cor. 8:5-6, etc. – do not contradict a text like John 10:34 where Jesus Himself refers to the people of God as “gods.” The latter are “gods” via participation; God alone is God by nature.
The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4):
“For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.” (St. Irenaeus)
The people of God are “partakers of the divine nature.” Jesus Christ revealing Himself to be “the Son of God” was one of the most profound ways he revealed his Divinity in the New Testament, our being “sons of God” reveals our participation in Divinity as well.
In the words of Pope St. Leo the Great, written more than 1,500 years ago: “Christian, recognise your dignity and, now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return to your former base condition by sinning. Remember who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Never forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of the Kingdom of God.”
So, not the “divine son” of Hellenistic-Jewish writers. The early Christians, and indeed the authors of Scripture, ” Christianised” this concept and radically expanded and altered it to express and teach that Jesus, by His Divine nature, is God incarnate.
Dear Happy Jack;
In response :
1. The most common name for our Father God in the Old Testament, is His personal name ‘Yahweh’, which occurs 6,828 times in the Hebrew Masoretic Text (as the Tetragammaton), and 6, 823 times (as ‘Yahweh’) in the New Jerusalem Bible. ‘Elohim’ only occurs some 2,606 times in the Hebrew text.
2. In John 10:33-36, Jesus uses a Jewish-type argument to prove that instead of claiming to be ‘God’, He is in fact, claiming to be only ‘the Son of God’.
3. Your supposition that Jesus was ‘God’, despite Jesus’ clear denial that He was ‘God’ in John 10:33-36, flies in the face of Jesus’ clear words in John 17:1-3. This was why people like Augustine, Hilary and Ambrose felt that they had to change the text of John 17:3, in order to salvage the ‘Trinity’ doctrine. Without such Text-tampering, the post-New Testament, ‘Trinity’ doctrine was seen to them as ultimately, illogical.
The Anglican Patristics expert, Professor Maurice Frank Wiles recognized that the Trinity is not supported by the Bible, but is instead, the product of specific, post-New Testament, historical and Philosophical-cultural factors, which were based upon a misunderstanding of early Christian thought, and the Jewish principal of agency. As such, Anglican and Roman Catholic scholars such as Karl-Joseph Kuschel (apparently), Maurice Wiles and Professor Walter Matthews did not see the ‘Trinity’ theory as a literal or dogmatic ‘truth’, nor as a final and definitive statement concerning the nature of God. However, once any post-New Testament, religious tradition becomes established, it is almost impossible to dislodge.
4. Yes – Christians in the future, do seem to share in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4; cf. 1 John 3:2; 1 Cor. 15:28). Even Paul prayed for Christians to currently be :
“filled with all the fulness of God.” (Eph. 3:19; A.V.)
However, even then, there will still only be one true God, Who is the Father (John 17:1-3; 1 Cor. 8:6; 1 Cor. 15: 23-28).
@ Pellegrino
John 10:30-38 couldn’t be any clearer. He was threatened with stoning because He claimed to be God, – verse 30: “I and the Father are one,”; and verse 33: “the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”
As for the name of God in Scripture, as you well know, there are several.
Early Christianity faced a number of general misunderstandings of Scripture. There was “Jewish Messianism,” with the figure of the Messiah as a glorified man and the expected earthly Kingdom of God. There was a “Hellenistic-Christianity,” the Messiah was the Greek Logos. Then there a “Servetian Unitarian Christianity,” which interpreted the divinity and its manifestations as a historical, modalistic process. HJ is sure there were others too.
Orthodox Trinitarian Christianity, as revealed in Scripture, emphasised there was one God but with three Persons, Father, Son and Spirit. This orthodox catholic belief had to be expressed and explained – the unity of God in the Trinity – by Christianising philosophical ideas from Hebrew and Greek religious-philosophical concepts on the nature of God. It thus sought to reconcile Greek religious ideas about a Saviour who acts as a mediator between God and humans, with the Hebrew concept of the Messiah, who was presented and expected as a national liberator.
Justin Martyr (114-165 AD) is the first Christian to use the philosophical terms of his time to build a coherent system of thought. His theological expositions drew on Jewish biblical exegesis, Greek religious doctrines, and Middle Platonism. A primary influence were the writings of Philo of Alexandria, and the Greek philosopher Numenius. Justin expands these doctrines and concepts to clarify the Christian revelation in the Gospels.
As Jesus says in Matthew 28:19, Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Still, as Jack’s teacher in days gone by was fond of reminding him, Erasmus cautioned in 1523:
Do you have a cite on the woman-more-likely-to-experience-make-violence claim? I was under – and a brief google backs this up- that it was the other way around.
Drag is obviously not Christian. It obviously shouldn’t have a place in a church or a Christian festival. The Bishops should do something about it. They won’t. But we should focus on what is pure and keep pure ourselves rather than allowing the noisy storms of the world to distract our eyes from the real thing.
Not that there is anything wrong with this article. If somebody is at a Church and a drag performance is suggested then this article could be a great blessing to him. And if somebody was thinking of going to the green festival. But I say it as a warning to people like me.
The article doesn’t say women are *more* likely than men to experience violence, but that they experience male violence. Yes, you are right, men experience more violence—but that comparator is a discussion for another day I think…
“What is the church communicating when the latest trend in theology and contextual mission is a sexualised parody of a group of people who bear the brunt of male violence”
Am I misunderstanding that? I just think it hurts the argument if it includes things which are false (and if I’m not misunderstanding this, then this includes this.) I’m not trying to bring up the comparator.
Am I misunderstanding that?
‘Bear the brunt of’ is a little vague. If there are fewer incidents of male-on-female violence than male-on-male violence (which there are) but each one of those incidents tends to be more serious (are there stats for that?) then it could be argued that women suffer more from male violence and therefore ‘bear the brunt of’ it.
Also you could argue that a simple incident count misses significant information. For example a woman living with an abusive man might one actually be the victim of an actual assault once in a blue moon, but might live in constant fear of such.
So I think the phrasing is defensible, but perhaps not ideal. Perhaps better would be something like ‘a group of people who are often on the receiving end of male violence.’
I think you are getting at the nub of the issue in that it is the ongoing effects of male-on-female violence which are more severe than those of male-on-male violence. There is a real need for the charities which help women – and their children – escaping from an abusive relationship.
It’s true that more men are victims of violence than women. Those men are (of course) overwhelmingly victims of male violence too. My point was not about comparing who is more likely to suffer violence, but the simple fact that women have historically been victims of male violence, and still are, and that sets a grim context for any art form that parodies women in a demeaning way. It’s part of my argument that it’s misogynistic. But you’re right: the way I phrased it could be read to imply that more women are victims of violence than men, but that’s not at all what I meant.
Thank you. I think your wider point is very wise.
Although Drag Queens are more common, there are also Drag Kings.
A friend of a friend is a professional drag queen. I think they would be quite offended/outraged to think that other people thought they were parodying women – it’s a diva act. It’s not supposed to be mocking women.
I think there’s also an issue with context here as well. Minority culture doesn’t translate well to people who were hostile to those people before they met the culture!
You can’t mock and demean gay men for being fem, but then also complain when they put on a big wig and high heels. Gay people have a right to exist too.
You can’t mock and demean gay men for being fem, but then also complain when they put on a big wig and high heels.
Nobody complained about anyone putting on wigs and high heels until they started doing it in front of children.
I saw Danny LaRue, Lily Savage and several pantomimes as a child.
This has more to do with the US Republicans need to find a minority to demonize for the election than it does with concern for children.
If they were concerned for children they would act to stop sexual assault in churches and they would act to stop school shootings.
I have never heard of a case where a child was assaulted or killed by a Drag Queen or King
Peter Jeremy;
I only read the first sentence of your comment on so called “Drag Kings”, and I couldn’t read anymore !
Peter – spare me details !!
God bless.
Pellegrino
So don’t condemn people before you even know the basic facts
The Bishops won’t do something about it. Correct. And it is precisely that perceived weakness which has emboldened the drag lobby (like Nadia Bolz-Weber; like Peter Tatchell) to make inroads into this particular denomination, as witness Church Times 28.7.23.
Christopher :
The Anglican drag lobby ?
We’re scaping the barrel now !
God preserve us.
This is only shorthand for those who are approving, which is a large number. (When I put ‘like’ in brackets, what I meant was: ‘like it has emboldened…’, NOT ‘for example…’.)
Weakness leads to wokeness, and vice versa.
And it is a vice.
Is what is described in the article the Inclusive Evangelical manifesto?
I don’t know.
@ Geoff
Not sure it can be described as a “manifesto”, but it’s certainly part of a strategy to “queer the church” and break down conventional heteronormality and binary male/female concepts. Just Google and read the comments of the women vicar/rector of these churches defending these events.
Deliberately or otherwise, churches are colluding with a wider agenda. Modern day drag queens are part of an effort to promote gender theory – the idea that gender is a social construct, not a biological reality .
Drag attempts to pass itself off as a highly-sexualised caricature of femininity. Many of the performers wear sexually provocative outfits and introduce themselves with names containing explicit sexual innuendo. It’s pernicious, especially when presented to children. They are being encouraged to accept these men could be women because of how they are dressed. The altar in St Mark’s, for example, was bedecked with political LGBT messaging such as “born this gay” and “trans pride”.
Sarky of blessed memory used to let his children watch RuPaul. I wonder how it’s turning out.
@ Anton
He used to shop as Pound Saver too …. bet the queues have grown!
Drag is an excellent example that at any one time the battle lines are at a particular place. We have reached the point where this is 50-50 in the visible debate, wherever it actually is in public opinion. Predictably the Anglicans are the first Christians to cave in (with the Quakers, Methodists, URC). It can all be explained sociologically. People are better than sociological pawns.
Whatever is 50-50 in the public debate becomes the main talking point of the hour. Nothing to do with that being the world’s most important topic that determines who is in or out, as people keep saying about homosexuality. Everything to do with what is 50-50 at the time.
The Church Times had an interview 2 weeks ago on their back page of this nature.
The interview forestalled criticism and opposition by labelling anyone who might criticise or oppose a hater in advance. Hence no debate was allowed, even in this organ of debate(!) Of course, it is obvious that a main reason people forestall debate is that they know they will lose it.
The reasons for opposition are obvious. Children can be carefree in pretending to be any character at all. But it is in the area of gender that our present society is most vulnerable because broken homes are destabilising the healthy father-mother balance at the bedrock of a child’s fundamental/initial development. For every action there is a reaction. So all kinds of distressed gender-related manifestations are appearing, as compensations for the rough deal of cards these children were dealt. Good for them. To react is to confirm that it matters and matters intensely. But realisation of that does not bring the slightest healing, and it is healing or rather prevention that is after all the point. Our societal structures need to be set up in such a way that this unhealthy gender imbalance (which occasions these various cries of distress) does not appear in young children’s lives in the first place, as in healthy societies (including our own till yesterday) it does not.
Christopher
Both my husband’s parents and my parents have remained married in very happy marriages our whole lives. You don’t become gay because your parents get a divorce. That’s obviously untrue
Have I ever met anyone who understands how statistics/information works less?
The best way to understanding is that to begin with the largest scale patterns available are stated. Because we are dealing with thousands or millions of people, you actually thought I was saying something that was true of every one of those thousands or millions of people without any exception? Please tell me it’s not true.
What evidence is there that most gay people come from ‘broken homes’? What do you mean by that phrase? – divorced/separated? Like Peter Jeremy above my parents remained married for more than 50 years, yet I am also gay. However I never had a loving or good relationship with my dad, so I suspect that was a key factor regards my own sexuality. And I think many other gay men would identify with that if they were honest about it. If damage is done, I think it’s in the early years of a child’s life, and has little if anything to do with a future divorce.
In fact, I suspect that with more gay male couples adopting etc children, the boys will likely not become gay if their fathers have been loving towards them. Which is rather ironic. Of course the ideal is loving male and female parents, and that should be the norm. But let’s not pretend that the causes of homosexuality has nothing to do with married, straight dads or mothers.
PC1
If it helps I’m certain your gayness has nothing to do with your relationship with Dad.
These theories were debunked in the 1960s. They aren’t true. You’re not some naughty little boy rebelling against his father.
Peter Jermey, you are wrong here, and PC1 Peter is generous in sharing his experience, and fairly typical.
I summarise the research evidence here. It is clear that home context has a statistically significant impact on the development of our sexual identity. How could it not?
https://www.psephizo.com/sexuality-2/are-we-born-straight-or-gay/
Ian
Correlation isn’t causation.
Self identification doesn’t give you a representative sample and becomes less so with increasing age of the study.
If you were gay in the 70s, 90s or even 2010s you’d be far more likely to self identify as gay if your parents were divorced or you had a poor relationship with them because you had less to lose by coming out
Christopher
I agree with you that these are 4 different things
All people who are gay are gay because their parents separated
Most people who are gay are gay because their parents separated
Some people who are gay are gay because their parents separated
Some people who are gay come from broken homes
I think to have any statistical evidence for most/Some you’d first want to show that statistically gay people are more likely to have divorced parents than straight people, which you have not done. Even then you’d run into the old chestnut “correlation is not causation”. More people self identify as gay now than when I was a child and more people have divorced parents that could be because divorce makes people gay or that gay kids push parents to divorce or that a third thing caused both or that it’s just a coincidence
The evidence is clear in the research. See my link posted above.
How could our relationship with our parents *not* shape our psycho-sexual development? The claim is implausible.
Ian
I didn’t claim that.
My claim is that divorce of parents doesn’t make kids gay.
Stating this as fact when you don’t even have a good statistical correlation is very dangerous. Why? Because blaming the parents further breaks down the family relationships because one or both parents may be blamed or blame themselves for the child being gay.
My claim is that divorce of parents doesn’t make kids gay.
I see the problem. You see ‘family background has an effect on sexual development’ and read ‘divorce of parents makes kids gay’, which no one ever said.
No single factor ‘makes kids gay’. But lots of factors have an effect.
S
Christopher was claiming that (some?) Gay people are gay because their parents divorced.
Pc1 thinks his poor relationship with his father made him gay.
The truth is there is no known way to make a person gay or straight. The only factors we have any scientific evidence for (not just corellation amongst unrepresentative surveys) are genetics and (for men) having a mother who previously gave birth to multiple boys.
Being gay is not anybody fault. It’s not poor parenting.
Christopher was claiming that (some?) Gay people are gay because their parents divorced.
What Christopher actually wrote was:
‘broken homes are destabilising the healthy father-mother balance at the bedrock of a child’s fundamental/initial development.’
Which is not that.
S
In the context he was either saying that or had started a completely new topic of conversation that has nothing to do with gay people.
Sounds as if Christian Sanctification is out of fashion.
Thanks to Mike for an informative, original and well organised blog.
Thanks John, much appreciated!
Since my article went live, first on my own site then here, I’ve received private messages from lots of women (mostly ‘inclusive’ Christians and atheists) saying they hate drag and find it aggressive and demeaning.
But they feel they can’t say so publicly, or even click ‘like’ when my article is reposted on social media, because they’re afraid of losing their jobs for supporting the views I express in my piece.
For me, that’s been one of the most revealing aspects of this whole episode.
This is very significant and revealing…
I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.
Yes – significant and revealing. Isn’t it similar to the reaction towards ‘blacking up’, a practise that has been discredited and to which people of African origins quite rightly take offence?
It’s also interesting that both have woman vicars/priests/rectors … whatever.
The Revd Lucy Winkett is the rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, and the vicar of St Mark’s, Southend, is *Mother* Cherry Sandove (what’s the “mother” about?).
I think you people should probably learn a bit about Drag before condemning it. You don’t seem to know anything, but are convinced it’s an abomination!
So your’re OK with blackface then? I thought so.
James
If Drag was mocking women then I would oppose it. I don’t agree with blackface, no.
But there are other female clergy who wouldnt take the same view. I know one who finds it offensive that some would rather call God ‘Mother’. Just right.
What once was simply a pantomime farce which nobody took seriously, knowingly pretend, has become a nasty campaign. It’s rot and rotting…. and embraced… Child exploitation in plain sight.
The idea that churches might take part (or have) is horrific. You don’t have to “do theology” to see what a dangerous nonsense this is… you’d think!
Can you explain why it was OK in pantomime?
As a child I went to pantomimes, I saw Danny La Rue once and Lily Savage was often on prime time TV.
Can you explain why this is *suddenly* a problem?
As a child I went to pantomimes, I saw Danny La Rue once and Lily Savage was often on prime time TV.
Well, one important difference is that everyone knew they were fictional characters played by male actors. Nobody ever claimed that when Paul O’Grady put on the Lily Savage costume that he really became a woman.
Lily Savage is a Drag Queen. That’s what Drag is
I think you are confusing trans people with Drag
And another important difference is that the Lily Savage character was created in adults-only venues, was significantly toned down for prime-time television, and was never aimed at children; people knew that was inappropriate.
Such drag acts as were aimed at children — pantomime dames, the two Ronnies, etc — were utterly non-sexual (or at most made innuendos that would go over the heads of the children in the audience).
The Two Ronnie’s had LOADS of innuendo!
Drag shows generally are pitched differently depending on the audience, as all entertainment. Lily Savage wasn’t unusual
Yes I remember Not the Nine O’Clock News I think mocking the Two Ronnies for their sexual innuendo. Apparently the 2 Rons werent happy, but it was the truth.
Still, fork handles was funny.
Who said “suddenly”?
Your pantomimes visits post date this 73 year old visits.
Does a “date” matter? The gutter slide is clear whatever the trajectory is/was. Surely it’s change from “attempt at comedy” to “sexualised propaganda” is obvious to everyone… and blatantly deliberate?
Ian Hobbs
It’s suddenly because there wasn’t a Christian outcry against drag until Republican politicians in the US restarted their attacks on gay people. Drag wasn’t an issue even 2 years ago,now armed militia are showing up to try to shutdown Drag shows. There were no protesters when I saw pantomimes or when I saw Danny LaRue. The Christian outrage against Mrs Doubtfire was to do with divorce subject matter, not Drag.
Drag wasn’t an issue even 2 years ago
That’s not true: here’s an article from 2019 about a petition protesting against Drag Queen Story Time: https://lithub.com/a-petition-protests-the-alas-support-for-drag-queen-story-hour-events/
Why did it become an issue in the USA in 2019? That’s easy to explain. The first Drag Queen Story Time was in 2015, in San Francisco; then over the next couple of years the events spread to other super-liberal places like New York. It was in 2018/2019 that they started happening in normal places, and as soon as they did, the petitions and protests started in reaction.
So as I wrote, blaming this on ‘Republicans’ is like blaming the Second World War on Poland. Republicans were just minding their own business when Drag Queens started showing up in schools and children’s libraries and they, quite naturally, reacted. The Republicans didn’t make this an issue; the people putting on Drag Queen Story Time did.
I’m not in the USA… republicanism isn’t me…
Sexualised drag has been around a while but in the uk seems rolling quickly
S
Drag Queen Story hours involve kids listening to a drag queen read them a children’s book about treating people who are different to them well. The only kids there are kids whose parents have chosen to take them.
I’m happy to retract my “2 years” and replace it with “4 years” if that makes you happier. My point stands that Drag has been a part of children’s entertainment and adults entertainment all of my life. And *suddenly* its a problem.
My point stands that Drag has been a part of children’s entertainment and adults entertainment all of my life. And *suddenly* its a problem.
As I pointed out, it’s not ‘suddenly’. Drag Queen Story Time started in 2015; it expanded over the next few years; the backlash starts in 2018. It’s simply not the case that Drag Queen Story hour had been going on for decades and ‘suddenly’ people had decided it was a problem; it’s a new phenomenon and as soon as people became aware of it they decided it was unacceptable. It’s pretty clear what the causal link is here.
And no, this isn’t a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc: the articles, protests, petitions etc are all explicit that they are in reaction to the moving of drag queens from adult venues into children’s spaces like schools and libraries.
S
So a Christmas pantomime is not a children’s space?
So a Christmas pantomime is not a children’s space?
Pantomime dames are clearly a different thing to sexualised drag acts.
S
Generally in pantomime the dame is very sexual and, of course, the male lead is usually played by a female.
Not all Drag is sexual.
Generally in pantomime the dame is very sexual
No, generally a pantomime dame’s costume is not at all sexual.
S
Most Drag Queens costumes are not sexual.
You’re taking some cherry picked cases and assuming they are representative
Its always been a problem to sanctified Christians.
I saw Danny La Rue once
By the way, thanks — your mention of Danny La Rue caused me to look up a poem half-remembered from school, and I find it is ‘Unto Us…’ by Spike Milligan
The lack of sentiment
for the unborn contrasts
the love poured out on
‘sentient’ animals.
(words chosen for poetic effect).
Great poem S. All I remember of Spike’s poems at school was ‘Little Jim’.
Thank you for this article.
A tiny chink of light, in a very, very dark, Christian world.
I fear for my child, a mother now, I fear for my grandchildren, if this new world comes to fruition.
As Christians, we must re- learn to trust our instincts, and call a spade a spade, when we see evil ,dressed up as kindness, we Must oppose it.
It is up to the younger generations to stand up and be counted, gird up your loins, and have the courage my generation sadly lacked.
I think this is one area of culture that is highlighting the difference between culture warrior conservatism and Christianity *because* here in the US there isn’t the culture of drag as family entertainment or entertainment for children like in the UK – certainly my generation and my parents generation in the UK had drag as a staple of light entertainment and it has been a key part of pantomimes for much longer than that.
In the US it is the latest target of Republican culture wars. I think it has achieved wild success for them because so few Americans even understand what it is and seem to think it’s stripping or some such. New laws have been brought in making it illegal in some states(!)
The culmination of this was me hearing an American suggest that the BBC was committing an actual crime by having a drag actor in Doctor Who(!)
It’s been a legitimate form of entertainment all of my life and nobody seems to have had a problem with it. Now suddenly it’s the latest Great Evil(!)
In the US it is the latest target of Republican culture wars.
This is like blaming Poland for starting the Second World War. Utterly inappropriate sexualisation is put in front of children, Republicans object, and it’s a Republican culture war?
Who started it?
S
It’s the latest iteration of a long held conspiracy theory that gay men are a threat to children.
In the 80s it was all about banning gay men from being teachers and now we have this culture war in the states where Republican politicians (especially Nikki Hayley and Ron Desantis) are trying to stir up fear of LGBT people by outlawing drag and having book bans.
The way I know this has nothing to do with Christianity is that UK Christians have not had a vendetta against Drag until US Republicans started asking these laws
What is the meaning of this chant?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_BfG3xrA5k
To upset the far right nut jobs who turn up at Pride events to demand gay people be put to death.
You know the far right were making that demand at that rally?
Peter, could you share a video of the “far right nut jobs who turn up at Pride events to demand gay people be put to death” that prompted these men to chant “we’re coming for your children”?
Anton
I didn’t film them sorry
Anton
They had a banner saying we deserved the death penalty.
You were at that rally? Or a rally where people chanted “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children?”
Anton
It was a Pride March, not a rally.
I attended a different Pride event where there were ‘Christian’ protesters threatening children and calling for our execution. From my context the meaning if this chant becomes obvious. It’s perhaps less obvious to anyone who didn’t go to a US Pride event this summer
If you wish to respond aggressively to adults threatening a gay pride march, why mention children?
Anton
Because that’s the protesters claim – that gay people are pedophiles and should ve executed.
“A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this” – Deuteronomy 22:5.
Anton –
Amen !
@ Anton
No Israelite in that time wore pants or slacks – both genders wore some type of robe, so how does it apply today? The general principle is that men and women ought to dress in a way appropriate for their culture, maintaining gender distinctions.
Deuteronomy 22:5 does not forbid Scotsmen from wearing kilts, and it does not forbid a woman from wearing jeans or pants.
HJ found this interpretation helpful by John H. Walton and Victor H. Matthews:
Trousers were invented only so that men could more easily ride horses.
“Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed figge tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches”. Geneva Bible. Not a horse in sight and both man and woman wearing trousers.
You would do well to check the Hebrew (Strongs 2290) rather than trust one translation at variance with it.
Oh Anton, lighten up mate.
That’s a really helpful link. Ooh, er, no! Just read. That’s a really helpful quotation!! Thanks.
Wheat from the chaff ….
Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.
Deut 22:10
I’ve never watched Ru Paul – just seen adverts about programmes coming up. I assume it’s mainly gay guys ‘camping’ it up over the top. I mean, I think it’s meant to be a bit OTT, isn’t it. God bless them.
And God bless you all. This is my goodbye post. I’m afraid I am never posting here again on this site.
https://www.psephizo.com/sexuality-2/general-synod-llf-and-the-mind-of-the-church-what-is-the-evidence/#comment-432550
I’m afraid it’s best to part ways with this website. I’m through.
Dear Susannah –
Never say never. You might change your mind in the morning.
At least come back with your football comments.
This is my goodbye post.
This is, what, like your sixth goodbye post? Unless I missed a couple.
Here’s a tip: if you’re going to leave somewhere, don’t announce your leaving or make a big thing of it. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Just quietly go away — or if it’s a website, just stop posting one day.
@ S
Don’t be so ungracious!
To Gracious Happy Jack –
Got Sussanah back.
You know how to do it.
I don’t know whether you are still looking here. Have just replied to your link above. Go well xx
What Mike writes shows that this has passed from Pantomime, or playing it for laughs.
There is now a qualitative difference that is highly sexualised which demeans women and men and is a bringer of harm to children.
The personal responses Mike has had is indeed revealing. Even so I do wonder why that in the church it isn’t denounced even by those in the affirming camp.
Can you substantiate the claim that Drag has become more sexualized or the claim that it harms children? How does it harm children?
seeing you see not, and hearing you hear not. Matt 13:13
And Jeremiah 5:21.
Thanks for confirming my point Peter.
Geoff
Is that a no, you can’t?
You were ok with the exact same thing 5 years ago, but now it’s suddenly an outrage
Was I? You know nothing of me except as I’ve revealed on this site.
What a sweeping and ignorant lie.
David Roberberston has been drawing attention to what’s been going on for years in the UK and around the world. as you are well aware as a sometime commentator.
Goodye. Others may give you time but I’ll not waste my time any longer with your callow, unchristian secular belief, world view system, thanks.
I don’t recall David Robertson railing against the evils of Lily Savage
You actually can’t see it?
Even if you couldn’t see it, you would still avoid it if there were even a risk. But the judgment of those who could see it would need to be preferred anyway.
Christopher
My town had a very small Pride event this year featuring a marimba band and 3 Drag Queens. It was designed to be family friendly because it was primarily put on to support LGBT youth in our school district.
A huge number (I’d guess 50) protesters gathered outside, mostly from outside our town yelling obscenities at children, telling the kids that their parents were pedophiles and going to hell and calling for our execution by the state.
From my perspective it wasn’t the Drag Queens who were causing the children harm. It was the “Christian” protesters.
There is no such thing as LGBT youth in a school context – that is abuse pure and simple, as quite obviously our bodies and brains are still unsettled and in process of development till about age 25 (brains) and 21 (bodies) when they finally stabilise.
Christopher
Most gay people know they are gay when they hit puberty or before. The school serves students up to age 18. Some kids, of course, experience some confusion about such things, but they were welcome too
Peter, can this be the final time that you make unsupported assertions and then somehow expect everyone has to submit to *your* assertions rather than anyone else’s?
If they are unsupported, you will not get many takers, and no intelligent takers.
What you say is quite untrue. Adolescence is a time of turbulence and being unsettled. The most unsettled behaviour and the unwisest behaviour are both associated with it, and with hormonally-affected times of life in general. Things settle down later. However, if chaotic behaviour takes root during adolescence, and is societally allowed to do so, it will become embedded.
No-one is going to prefer your unsupported assertion over the large scale studies of Savin-Williams and Diamond.
And if you say ‘experience confusion’, is that not simply because they are going through a confused period of life, so that anything they think or do at this period of life should not necessarily be taken at face value?
Christopher
I certainly don’t think teens who claim to be LGBT people should never be allowed to say they made a mistake.
I’m speaking from my own experience, but also there have been studies done on when gay people first know they are gay. Almost any gay person will tell you that they knew from age 13 or younger. If you don’t believe me then go ask a gay friend.
Regardless of whether you think they are confused or not, there are u18s who say they are LGBT in our school district and the event was put on primarily with them in mind because of the toxic political environment
From which we learn 3 things:
They are treating the most mixed up time of their life as the most authoritative. I mean…
2. If this most messed up time is allowed to fester, then who is surprised at what transpires?
3. Those who felt this estrangement then are in the majority of those who feel it later; but the majority of those who feel it then do not feel it later, once they are grown up. See Savin-Williams.
Christopher
Are you saying teens will become straight adults if they aren’t supported as gay teens? Or that if our community demonized them instead of supporting them that they would just decide to become straight?
Because if that were the case there would be almost no gay people older than maybe 30.
Gay teens didn’t get any community support when I was a teen
It appears to me that there are “angels of light”
{ Agents of…Who? } appearing as pious,genial,and undefiled but alien to the Spirit of truth, deceiveing and sowing doubt, of such says Paul “turn aside”2 TIM 4 vs 2 – 5
https://youtu.be/mNmYqVffXN4
1970s family entertainment that’s suddenly a new threat to children apparently
1970s family entertainment that’s suddenly a new threat to children apparently
Yeah that’s exactly the same as
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1639266932258906113?s=46&t=TBv3UvhN80riPVO566A1FQ
Totally the same thing, no difference I can see, not at all.
S
I can’t say for certain but that doesn’t look or sound like a Drag event to me. I think you’ve been had!
Also,no, it’s not as sexualized as the two ronnies
I will say that 1970s BBC light entertainment isn’t the high watermark for protecting children and respecting women.
Neither is the church – churches are notoriously bad at protecting men,women and children from predators
You think that every bit of 1970s family entertainment is the same as every other bit?
Sometimes I despair.
Not my point
My point is that Drag is not new or a danger to children or sinister
My point is that Drag is not new or a danger to children or sinister
Drag Queen Story Time (ie, the introduction of sexualised drag into children’s lives) is new (started in 2015), is a danger to children, and is sinister.
Drag Queen Story Time is not sexualized though.
It’s a Drag Queen reading a children’s book.
That’s all it is. And the kids are there because their parents chose to take them.
Pantomime or the Two Ronnies is far more sexualized
Drag Queen Story Time is not sexualized though.
It’s a Drag Queen reading a children’s book.
‘Not sexualised’? With characters named things like ‘Flowjob’?
S
Can you please give the title of the book that features the character called FlowJo
Can you please give the title of the book that features the character called FlowJo
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5317604/flowjob-drag-queen-paisley-primary-school/
S
So I agree that the school should have sent home a permission slip or at least informed the parents.
Despite clearly trying to find muck, there’s no suggestion the DQ did or said anything inappropriate during their visit.
Also I have to point out that Mairie Black was also in attendance. She generally dresses as a man. I have no problem with her doing so, but I do wonder why this is “ok” but Drag on a man is not.
But name one person who said it was new.
What a bizarre point.
You think that all things that are not new are ok?? Because they are not new??
Illogicality in excelsis.
Christopher
The outrage against Drag is new
The outrage against Drag is new
Yes, and it was provoked by the insertion of inappropriate drag acts into children’s lives, which is also new.
S
Drag was a normal part of children’s entertainment when I was a child, as I have already pointed out.
Drag was a normal part of children’s entertainment when I was a child, as I have already pointed out.
This kind of sexualised drag act wasn’t. It was confined to adult clubs.
S
Lily Savage was sexual
The Two Ronnies were sexual
Pantomime were sexual
So, Peter, there was previously no opposition to drag people performing for primary and nursery children?
Or is it that they just did not perform for them anyway previously?
Which is is?
Christopher
I was not aware of opposition to Drag for children until a few years ago. There my have been some individuals, but there certainly was not legislation
It has been a part of children’s entertainment all of my life and all of my parents lives
@ Peter J
Just to reiterate:
“Queering” intends to complicate and disrupt what is perceived to be normal to directly challenge heterosexuality, traditional gender roles, and the male/female binary.
Here is how queering is defined in the “Encyclopaedia of Diversity and Social Justice” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015):
Drag attempts to pass itself off as a highly-sexualised caricature of femininity. Many of the performers wear sexually provocative outfits and introduce themselves with names containing explicit sexual innuendo. It’s pernicious, especially when presented to children. They are being encouraged to accept these men could be women because of how they are dressed. The altar in St Mark’s, for example, was bedecked with political LGBT messaging such as “born this gay” and “trans pride”.
Actually?
Happy Jack
So when I watched Dame Edna as a child was that not a man pretending to be a woman?
Not all Drag is sexualized
Mostly it’s just miming to pop songs.
Have you actually read the article? Andthe authors comment on the responses he’s received?
Yes and I don’t agree.
Sean Feucht ran as a Republican candidate and frequently holds political rallies. This is a US political issue, not an issue of morality or faith
He wasn’t a highly-sexualised caricature of femininity.
Happy Jack
It’s like the gay thing. You guys are creating carve outs for people you like while demonizing others for behaving in exactly the same way.
Dame Edna used a lot of sexual jokes. Most of Drag is just miming to pop songs so she was actually more sexual than average
Liberal theology is a drag on the church.
Indeed it is, but I don’t think in any of PJ’s comments on this site that there has been any indication of a grasp, any iota of understanding, of Christian theology including salvation and sanctification.
When in a hole there is evidence of digging deeper without seeing..
God preserve us from intense gravitational, Black Holes.
The Bible is our only Guide.
Geoff
I’m not sure what you think Drag has to do with salvation.
Most of your comments to me seem to be an attempt to belittle me rather than engage with me.
I’m happy to discuss salvation, but that’s not the topic.
https://twitter.com/oratoba/status/1689029546790555648?t=jmy5NW73IkyoF8jJGV4_XA&s=19
Dear Penelope;
Get Susannah, back.
Have a word with her.
Is that a *like* from a Queer theorist of your stature, PCD.?
It is more of the same.
hyper sexualistion of any stripe. It is of a piece with the author’s article.
It is all to be denounced, not a subject of playing smug games with a a studied refusal to decry what the author sets out.
Is it to be concluded that you approve expressly or impliedly condone it?
Of course not. It’s a riposte to the allegations that drag is sexualising children. These beauty pageants are a thing in the US, particularly in white evangelical America and, as you can see, it’s corrupt, vulgar and abusive.
Children are much more often sexualised by heterosexuality than they are by homosexuality. It’s insidious, but little noticed because it hides its depravity behind normalcy.
Who is it little noticed by?
‘These beauty pageants are a thing in the US, particularly in white evangelical America and, as you can see, it’s corrupt, vulgar and abusive.
Children are much more often sexualised by heterosexuality than they are by homosexuality.’
Yes, I agree. I don’t think there is anyone here who doesn’t.
But no-one is trying to normalise the idea of holding these in a church building. They are with drag.
Took the words from my mouth, Ian, as I had a further thought and was going to comment to that effect, only to see you got there first, thanks.
It would rather depend on the drag performance.
The finest drag I ever saw were the erstwhile bishops of Exeter, Plymouth and Crediton, and the Archdeacon of Barnstaple performing at a clergy conference. It was in a marquee rather than a church!
Penny, in this article Mike carefully delineates the difference between comedy, and contemporary sexualised drag.
I don’t understand why you seem to be incapable of recognising the difference, and bracket them all together.
It’s odd.
incapable of recognising the difference, and bracket them all together.
It’s kind of like someone who says that all dance halls should be banned because there is dancing in strip clubs, isn’t it?
Because most drag as entertainment has always been sexualised. It’s disingenuous to say it wasn’t. It’s always been transgressive. Isn’t that its point? I watched it as a child and think it’s fairly harmless, but I know others would disagree.
The idea that drag is suddenly deviant is the product of the performative outrage which is gaining traction in certain circles.
It’s interesting that one of the women you quote below is clearly a transphobe who refers to TIMs, a common slur.
The drag queen story hours I have seen have been unexceptionable. Not at all sexualised. I’m not saying some drag performances aren’t inappropriate, but I think it’s a diversion from the real causes and locations of abuse. Drag queens are a diversionary tactic. The real abusers are dads and uncles, priests, teachers and police men. And women.
Because most drag as entertainment has always been sexualised.
This is simply false. Dame Enda Everedge wasn’t sexualised. Neither are pantomime dames.
There have always been sexualised drag performances, yes, but they were regarded as for adults only (eg the original Lily Savage club performances) and were severely toned down when they were put on television where children might come across them.
The idea that drag is suddenly deviant is the product of the performative outrage which is gaining traction in certain circles.
No one says that drag is suddenly deviant. What is new, and deviant, is the deliberate exposure of children to more sexualised forms of drag. That’s new. It’s totally different from, say, Christopher Biggins playing Widow Twanky.
It’s interesting that one of the women you quote below is clearly a transphobe who refers to TIMs, a common slur.
What you call a ‘transphobe’ here is simply someone who recognises the reality that humans cannot change sex. That’s not anything-phobic, it’s just reality.
The real abusers are dads and uncles, priests, teachers and police men. And women.
Actually very few abusers are dads; the vast majority are step-dads or mum’s boyfriends.
PCD,
You can’t help yourself from always seeking to wueer the pitch. It is true to form to call someone a transphobe, when there is not evidence at all, execpt according to your Queer theory view.
Are you really deaf and blind to what has been written in the article and the comments Ian has garnnered? When all you can do is to evidence the concernd that debate and serious concern is being stiffled by hurling sntagonistic insults against those who dare oppose your life driven philosophies and causes.
Penny voices the utter lie about ‘dads and uncles’ without even mentioning chief culprits stepfathers and live in boyfriends. The uncles point is not wrong. The dads point is totally wrong proportionally and is a lazy and damaging cliche. See Robert Whelan, Broken Homes and Battered Children.
Reject the sexual revolution and you thereby do nothing but return to a massively sensibler status quo, and get rid of those stepfathers and live in boyfriends. Whereby you solve this completely unnecessary and hideous problem (apart from the uncles).
Geoff
Antagonistic insults hun?
Ian
OK so where is the “Christian” campaign against beauty pagents?
The same people who are telling you to oppose Drag are part of a political campaign to reelect the guy who used to own Miss Universe
Ian
It’s frustrating to me this notion of “sexualized Drag” as if Pantomimes, Lily Savage, the Two Ronnies were never smutty, but a local DQ miming along to Britney Spears is.
If the issue is sexual content then why not ban/oppose sexual content, rather than all Drag?!
I don’t particularly enjoy Drag. The last Drag I saw was two years ago. It was three DQs miming to pop songs. What’s sexual about that? How is that more sexual than Lily Savage talking about her private parts?
It’s frustrating to me this notion of “sexualized Drag” as if Pantomimes, Lily Savage, the Two Ronnies were never smutty, but a local DQ miming along to Britney Spears is.
(a) there’s a difference between ‘smutty’ and ‘sexualised’.
2. Lily Savage was a character from late-night adult clubs where children were not allowed. When the actor took the character from that environment onto prime-time television where children might be watching, the sexual elements were excluded.
S
I only saw Lily Savage on prime time and tea time TV. She did talk about sex, sex organs etc. It’s simply untrue to suggest that she was somehow more family friendly than DQ story times, which involve reading a child’s story book with a theme of inclusion to children whose parents have chosen for them to be there.
I agree that these pageants are disgusting but do two wrongs make a right? Also, you say it goes on in “white evangelical America”, but what proportion of the parents who put their children through this are churchgoers compared to the proportion in their communities?
I agree also that heterosexual promiscuity in the form of adultery is more undermining of the nuclear family than homosexuality, although that is essentially tautologous because a same-sex couple cannot have children that are theirs exclusively.
Isn’t the main point Ian makes, in line with Mike’s article, is that it doesn’t take place in church, whereas drag performances are being welcomed, permitted, condoned inside the church?
Yes Geoff, but the thread wanders whither it will.
Geoff
I go to a very progressive church. AFAIK nobody has ever attended in Drag, but they would be welcomed if they did
Your use of ‘progressive’ is so unintelligent (or sinister) and should be withdrawn.
You are surely not denying that different people consider different things progress;
Nor that the ones who are capable of debating this are preferable to those who treat it as a fait accompli;
Nor that those who just assume everyone thinks the same things are progress are not living in the real world and/or are trying to shoehorn everyone else into their world as though theirs was the only one that should matter;
Nor that you are branding dissentients to this philosophy (a philosophy which you have never defended) as ‘regressive’?
Christopher
In this context I mean its the only church I have ever been to where LGBT people, refugees and people with disabilities are not just welcome, but actually treated as normal.
As a child we never took our daughter to pantomimes at Christmas. I hated them and did not want her exposed to innuendo, and even if it may have gone over her head sometimes I wasnt prepared to risk it. Instead we always took her to a children’s production put on at the Old Vic Bristol or the Egg, Bath. We saw some outstanding productions of both classics and new plays. We always left the theatre having been uplifted, challenged and entertained in a healthy creative and flourishing way. It was something we all looked forward to. I would never have felt the same way had we been to most of the pantos advertised.
Thank you for your salubrious comments, Philippa.
You sound like a sanctified and wise woman.
God bless you.
I thought it might be worth posting a few comments from women on social media about this, for the record—and in line with Mike’s previous comment.
‘I’ve worked, fairly recently, in council Children’s Services and also for a project supporting children in care (and their carers). There are small number of children who have already been exposed to inappropriate sexualisation at home (brought in to witness parents / parent and partner in the bedroom), or worse still, been abused by adult or other child at home. Some of the DQSH and also the proposed Drag School at Greenbelt normalises the sexualisation of younger children. Chillingly, Greenbelt are genuinely hoping that the Drag School will allow some children to express themselves in a safe environment. I’m hoping we don’t get the headline of ‘youngsters in Drag children’s session at Greenbelt found touching themselves inappropriately after being told it’s normal to allow sexual self expression’. That’s the start of it.’
Ian
I think it’s important that Drag for children/families is age appropriate. I think it’s part of the “all gays are pedos” movement to suggest that all Drag is sexual.
I’m not at all saying that this lady made her comment in bad faith, but I do think she has listened too much to people who are willing to lie about LGBT people
I think it’s important that Drag for children/families is age appropriate.
Is a character called ‘Flowjob’ reading to children age appropriate, do you think?
S
I think that’s up to the parents to decide. If you think that’s not age appropriate for your child then don’t take your child along
I think that’s up to the parents to decide. If you think that’s not age appropriate for your child then don’t take your child along
Do you not think that venues like libraries should take some responsibility for making sure that events they market specifically to children are age-appropriate? Do you not think that parents should be able to trust that library-sponsored events are age-appropriate without having to check every one out in detail?
S
Yes I agree.
I also think the police should be more proactive at protecting children from abusive and obscene protesters
Is joking that children should be taught to ‘open their legs’ age-appropriate, do you think?
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20220720/281771337921701
S
No, but it would fly over most kids heads. However this is an example of what I’m talking about. It’s important to make it age appropriate.
There was an outage because it was offensive. If it had been the norm then there would not have been
Another: ‘Thank you so much for writing this. I hate drag. I have always thought that it an insult to femail sexuality and an expression of power in some distorted form. I thought the comparison with the The Black and White Minstrels Show was powerful and appropriate. Thank you’
And another: ‘Drag is adult entertainment. If we wouldn’t have strippers in church, we shouldn’t have drag. Drag plays to extreme stereotypes of female gender roles, which many women reject. If most congregants are women, what does it say about the church’s honouring of, and respect for, them, if men are encouraged into parodies of femininity?’
Ian
A lot of conservatives who know nothing about Drag seem to think its a strip show.
None of the Drag I have seen has been stripping (and how would that even work?!) The most sexualized Drag I have seen is at pantomimes!
And another: ‘There is a lot of it about, but as in many discourses, the dissentient women’s voices tended tend to get drowned out by those of men – not merely those of some gay men (for whom drag was a sort of defiant resistance against the accusations of effeminacy etc that were frequently directed at homosexual men, but which often carried undertones of misogyny in its use of language about women) but also increasingly now by the more overtly aggressive voices of trans-identified men and male rights activists who oppose any attempts by women to set boundaries and determine what is offensive or not in relation to how we are portrayed and treated.
It took a while for people to realise how offensive blackface was and how insidious and damaging other racial stereotypes were, it’s taking longer for women on this issue I think because we are still trying to consolidate and protect basic sex-based rights and protections ( it’s still less than a hundred years since all women were allowed to vote in the UK, and only sixty some since we had access to the more effective forms of birth control ,maternity leave, rules on equal pay, education etc. all of which are under renewed attack in many parts of the world) and in cultural terms the focus has been more on combating the sexual objectification of women more generally and their treatment in the media and the workplace and the issues of sexual exploitation. Drag was always an irritant for many of us but not worth so much focus when it was just pantomime dames, Les Dawson, Barry Humphries, Dick Emery etc. and we assumed it would die a natural death with other such forms of “humour” post the seventies. Unfortunately the resurgent RuPaulish American variant of drag which is much more pornified and vicious seems to have been increasingly mainstreamed in recent years but still many women (and men) are a bit reluctant to challenge it for fear of being associated with the sexual politics of the anti feminist right-wing on the one hand, or on the other of upsetting,or adding to the negative messages directed at other oppressed groups with whom we have a shared history of struggle.’
And another: ‘Some of us have always been uncomfortable with this and not necessarily seen it as harmless entertainment. I think the parallels made with the black and white minstrels was helpful in the article and I was heartened that a man was so eloquently representing my views as a woman. The phrase, ‘grotesque pastiches of sexualised womanhood’ was particularly helpful.’
Thank you, Ian.
Those dear women are smart cookies !
but oddly their comments have not provoked much response…
If I’m being honest, this is poorly argued article that is filled with straw man fallacies and double standards stacked on double standards. There probably are few places that children are sexualized more than inside of churches on Sunday morning. Instead of being concerned about addressing those very real issues…theologians spend their time worried about drag performances. I ask what is more harmful? Hearing a sexual joke one time at a drag show or growing up being taught that your own male body is an uncontrollable ball of lust and women’s bodies are only triggers or recipients of that lust? I would make the strong case that kids are much safer and less sexualized at a drag show then they are in their own churches. That is, if we were comparing.
‘There probably are few places that children are sexualized more than inside of churches on Sunday morning’
What a bizarre and groundless accusation. If those are the things you heard in a ‘church’ you went to, I am very sorry for you. But that is not what churches do.
Ian
Please consider the vast number of sexual predators who have used church to carry out their crimes and been protected by the church. Like it or not, this is the reputation churches have now.
It’s a frequent pushback comment, and an accurate one, that a child is statistically safer at a Drag Show than in a church
‘vast number of sexual predators’ That is an absurd claim.
The John Jay report into sexual assault by catholic priests of children alone suggests that 4% of American Roman Catholic priests are predators. I truly hope the RCC is the worst, but all the major denominations have this problem, including the CofE.
I think you’d find it hard to say that anything like that number of DQs are predators.
Not ‘are’ but ‘were then’. These findings do not show the eternal nature of the Catholic church, much as that would suit the tabloid mentality. It shows that (1) directly after, and in the context of, the sexual revolution, (2) almost always in a homosexual context, (3) disproportionately liberals of the Boston type covered themselves with shame.
Christopher
Are now. The RCC hasn’t changed.
There are continued complaints of sexual abuse in all major denominations including the cofe.
So a complaint/allegation is the same as a fact, isn’t it.
You are speaking very vaguely and without any numbers.
Where do you get your information from?
At the time of the John Jay report, antiCatholics did the following:
-Ignored the fact that the graph of abuse was the same as the graph of the sexual revolution more broadly;
-Called ephebophilia ‘paedophilia’, showing that they were cliche-bound tabloidesque sensationalists;
-Glossed over the correlation of abuse with liberal seminaries and areas;
-Even more glossed over the fact that we are talking 80+% homosexual abuse in a country where 1-2% are homosexual.
Christopher
Not for the first time I find your excuses bizarre! Abuse is not ok if the perpetrator went to a liberal seminary.
I agree accusations is not the same as guilt
It’s a frequent pushback comment, and an accurate one, that a child is statistically safer at a Drag Show than in a church
If you think it’s accurate then you will have statistics on the proportion of children who go to church who have been abused versus the proportion of children who go to drag shows who have been abused, right? So what are the statistics and where is your source?
(It seems unlikely to me because millions and millions of children go to church, and the proportion of them who were abused is tiny; while far fewer children go to drag shows, so even just by chance it’s likely that the proportion who have been abused is far higher. But if you have actual statistics with a source I’d be willing to consider the evidence.)
S
I’m not claiming that children who attend church are more likely to be abused than children who have seen Drag (indeed I would expect the majority of church children to have seen drag!)
I’m claiming that children are more likely to be sexually assaulted at church or by a church leader than they are at a Drag show or by a Drag performer.
The statistics speak for themselves. Most major denominations not only have a dire problem with predators amongst leadership they also have been attempting to cover up these crimes.
@ Peter J
Isn’t it also accurate that (predominantly) adult male-on-male child abuse also happens in wider secular society?
In a letter published in 2019, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI offered his views on the abuse scandal. “The power of evil arises from our refusal to love God… Learning to love God is therefore the path of human redemption.”
Benedict explores the social context surrounding the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s. This was accompanied by the collapse of moral theology, which begins to yield to relativist temptations. According to certain theologians, he observes, “there could no longer be anything that constituted an absolute good, any more than anything fundamentally evil; [there could be] only relative value judgments. There no longer was the [absolute] good, but only the relatively better, contingent on the moment and on circumstances.”
Benedict says, “The counterforce against evil, which threatens us and the whole world can ultimately only consist in our entering into this love (of God). A world without God can only be a world without meaning in which the standards of good or evil no longer exist, leaving only the law of the strongest. Power is then the only principle. Truth does not count, it actually does not exist.”
Benedict strongly accuses Western society of losing its true measure. “Western society is a society in which God is absent in the public sphere and has nothing left to offer it. And that is why it is a society in which the measure of humanity is increasingly lost. At individual points it becomes suddenly apparent that what is evil and destroys man has become a matter of course.” He says the answer to all this is “to learn again to recognise God as the foundation of our life … the greatness of the Mystery” of Christ’s death and resurrection. We need to ask the Lord for forgiveness and “ask Him to teach us all anew to understand the greatness of His suffering, His sacrifice.”
The crisis, caused by the many cases of clerical abuse, ”urges us to regard the Church as something almost unacceptable, which we must now take into our own hands and redesign. But a self-made Church cannot constitute hope.” Benedict XVI says the action of the devil is aimed at proving “that there are no righteous people … No, even today the Church is not just made up of bad fish and weeds. The Church of God also exists today, and today it is the very instrument through which God saves us. It is very important to oppose the lies and half-truths of the devil with the whole truth: Yes, there is sin in the Church and evil. But even today there is the Holy Church, which is indestructible.” Today’s Church, he says, “is more than ever a “Church of the Martyrs” and thus a witness to the living God.”
It is a great shame for the Catholic Church – and for the world – that Benedict went early – albeit for sound reasons of health.
This current craze of drag – especially insinuating itself into the most maternal of activities, reading stories to small children – is quite simply anti-women and anti-child. It is disgusting grooming.
And yet some people on this site cannot see this.
And yet some people on this site cannot see this.
I think a lot of people — on both sides, it must be said — have got locked into the mindset of ‘anything that annoys the other side must be good’, and as a result have ended up supporting some pretty obviously awful things and people (on the one side, Mr Trump, on the other, things like drag queens in schools, males in girls’ changing rooms, etc)
I don’t think it’s too strong to say that whichever side can get most people to snap out of this first will win the battle for the hearts of the general public, who right now are just looking at the whole thing with horror.
But I think both sides may be a long way from that yet.
James – oh, but they can see this. Every single one of those who claims not to is an enemy of the living God and they have figured out how to use good and holy language to look pious, while pushing forward an agenda that they know to be intrinsically evil and in defiance of the living God.
God seems to be hiding his face right now.
HJ
I think it’s hard to argue that child sexual abuse is more prevalent in secular society than in major denominations. Benedict has himself been in scandal for covering up sexual abuse. He’s only escaped prosecution for this because he was a ead of state and could claim immunity.
It’s disgusting of this man, however big his pointy hat, to blame secular society for his own crimes.
This is a major reason the church is in decline in the west – people have had enough of these men pretending to be wise moral arbiters while behind the thin curtain they behave as the worst sexual criminals
I think it’s hard to argue that child sexual abuse is more prevalent in secular society than in major denominations.
The prevalence of abuse in major denominations is probably the same as that in other institutions with ready access to children (eg schools) and significantly less than those institutions where the children are overwhelmingly more vulnerable (eg, children’s homes, foster families).
S
Abuse is more prevalent in churches than in schools, because teachers have accountability and they are fired and banned from teaching if they are caught abusing children in their care.
Abuse is more prevalent in churches than in schools, because teachers have accountability and they are fired and banned from teaching if they are caught abusing children in their care.
That’s not true. There are plenty of examples of teachers who were allowed to keep teaching even when, for example, all the parents knew to warn their sons to watch out for them.
S
Maybe 60 years ago, but not in my lifetime
I said ‘abuse is ok if the perpetrator went to a liberal seminary’?????
Where?
If you can’t find where, withdraw the claim.
My point was that where liberal chaos is taught, liberal chaos behaviour will result from that, as night follows day.
So don’t do the sexual-revolution-affirming teaching, and everything will remain fine.
You claimed there was a correlation between predators and liberal seminars as part of a ridiculous list of excuses for child abuse by church leaders.
There is no justification
@ Ian P
HJ believes Keaton’s comment ” … growing up being taught that your own male body is an uncontrollable ball of lust and women’s bodies are only triggers or recipients of that lust?” is directed against orthodox views regarding chastity. It’s ironic really given one hears very little these days from the pulpit on this.
Ian Paul – I’m grateful to you for all your hard work on this. It is truly ugly; it must be horrible doing it, but it is very enlightening.
If anyone ever imagined (as I did) that SSM was only to make life easier for people who wanted their life companion to be of the same sex, they should be disabused of this notion by looking at those who contribute to these pages – and seeing that those who are in favour of SSM are also those who are in favour of everything that is lurid and disgusting and vile – with the argument ‘oh look at this group of God-forsaken people within the church, heading for the eternal fire, who are engaged in such-and-such form of depravity – therefore the church should embrace this other form of depravity’.
It’s difficult and highly unpleasant reading, but it has clarified my thinking on these matters – hence these ‘sexuality’ posts are useful.
Jock
I really value your honesty.
Most LGBT people want full equality under the law. I don’t recall there ever being an argument that LGBT people would stop demanding equality if we were given the right to marry.
Men dressed up as OTT women reading stories to small children is basically grooming pre-schoolers by confusing them about the sexes. Mothers who bring their children to these ‘events’ should be ashamed of themselves.
James
And yet pretty well zero children have been sexually assaulted by Drag Queens, whereas untold numbers of children, women and men have been sexually assaulted by those pointing the finger at Drag Queens.
Even aside from church leaders, the political party trying to ban Drag in the English speaking world is the US Republicans, headed by a man found liable for sexual assault
You have probably never heard of Darren Moore of Cardiff.
Google him.
Drag queens are sick men who defame women with their antics. That is bad enough but trying to inveigle small children in their fantasy world is perversion.
And yet pretty well zero children have been sexually assaulted by Drag Queens
‘ In 2019, the Houston Public Library admitted that a registered child sex offender had been reading to children as part of their Drag Queen Storytime program. In 2020, UK Drag Queen Storytime tweeted out the pedophile slogan “Love has no age.” In 2021, a sponsor of Drag Queen Storytime in Milwaukee was arrested on child pornography charges. And this year, a Pennsylvania drag queen named Brice Patric Ryschon Williams, who has danced explicitly for children, was charged with 25 counts of child pornography in Pennsylvania.’
https://thebridgehead.ca/2022/07/04/drag-queen-who-danced-for-kids-charged-with-25-counts-of-child-pornography/
S
Ok so 2 or 3.
Just this year alone there are three different documentaries covering five different prominent church leaders involved in sexual abuse. I can name them if you would like? Frank Houston, Brian Houston, Jerry and Becki Fallwell, Josh Dugger.
Although if we are counting anyone who ever mentioned love to children then we are probably in the millions when it cones to church leaders.
Ok so 2 or 3.
I don’t believe it, you actually went here.
(Two or three that we know of ).
Total rubbish, and please withdraw it.
F Houston, yes. B Houston, not remotely. The issue is with whether he was in a position to *report* anything that he knew sooner.
S
We know of 100s of thousands of abusive church leaders. That’s the difference
Hundreds of thousands?
How many exactly?
All leaders?
And can you name them all? Where are they listed?
Would it be easier to make a list of everyone else?
Christopher
BH and Hillsong have pretty well admitted that a female staffer quit because BH harassed her and that he went into a female visitor’s hotel room and was there for a substantial amount of time and that she immediately cut ties with the church afterwards.
They have blamed his behavior on his alcohol and drug abuse. He was removed from his position only because this became public knowledge.
Actually I forgot that documentary talks about a third Hillsong leader who assaulted a student – Jason Mays. And another, Reed Bogard, has been accused of sexual assault.
It’s easy to name these people because their stories are in the media. There are endless cases that don’t make the media.
All that means is that in an extremely large organisation some people will fall short sometimes. Well, I never did. I thought everyone fell short sometimes.
You are playing the tabloid game of – one person did something bad once; ‘so’ ‘they’ are all like that. Yes, right. I am not saying it was just once, but you are arguing on the basis of once-is-enough.
But my point was not about that, but about the completely false and knowingly false linkage of BH to child abuse. Another predictable sleight of hand.
Christopher
Can you explain why you see a male married pastor using his position to try to get women in his care to have sex with him as merely “falling short”, but utterly condemn a gay man for marrying another gay man or for entertaining others in Drag?
Eh? They both seem equally bad to me.
Christopher
But you are downplaying sexual assault by church leaders as merely “falling short” while completely condemning same sex relationships. Falling short is being grumpy, not trying to pressure women in your care to have sex with you
This is why secular society sees churches as increasingly immoral. They aren’t good arbiters of sexual morality.
trying to ban Drag
No one is trying to ‘ban Drag’, as if that were even possible. What people are trying to do is return to the status quo ante Drag Queen Story Hour, ie, to the way things were in about 2010.
S
If only you were right.
Unfortunately these bans gave already become law pending judicial review.
In several states now its illegal to have a live performance where the entertainer is dressed according to the opposite sex. This has made having *any* LGBT event very difficult because you don’t have to be a DQ to fall into that category. The goal isn’t to criminalize Drag,but to demonize LGBT people in the public mind so that they will vote for Republicans. As I commented elsewhere I have already seen someone suggesting it was a crime to cast a DQ in Doctor Who. It’s not, but this idea that it is criminal, evil or a general danger is what these people are campaigning for
In several states now its illegal to have a live performance where the entertainer is dressed according to the opposite sex.
Okay, yes, badly-drafted laws are a thing and rushing laws through increased the odds of them being badly drafted.
The fact remains that these laws are a response to a real, recent issue, not manufactured outrage at something that has been going on for years without comment.
S
No they are a desperate attempt to gain votes by demonizing minorities, that’s why no thought has been put into the actual impact
You think paucity of sexual assaults is a *good* thing? That is setting the bar very low. How about the
-corruption;
-erosion of boundaries, grooming;
links to websites?
Chris
Gay people are not pedophiles
Incorrect. They are so very disproportionately:
(1) One third each of those males are ‘attracted’ to male, female, both.
(2) Youth is considered most ‘attractive’ by comparison with other ages.
(3) The relevant studies show massive disproportion: Laumann, Freund; Freund and Watson, Bradford; Erickson (even JR Hughes’s metaanalysis).
The two terms are not equivalent, but you are just trying to brush under the carpet these 3 huge pieces of data.
And don’t say that you meant by your initial point that the category of people that is ‘attracted’ to young people of their own gender is not the same as the category of people that is ‘attracted’ to adult people of their own gender. The answer to that one is contained in your definition. You defined it in such as way as to be obviously true by mere definition. But that leaves the 3 questions unanswered and hanging. What are your answers to them?
Christopher
Could you please rewrite this in English?!
I don’t understand what you are saying? Are you saying gay people are secretly bisexuals?
Chris
The same way you distinguish between heterosexuals and pedophiles
I’m not saying that, albeit self styled gay people are grater early impregnators than self styled straight, which does tend to prove the theory that what you call homosexuality is really hypersexuality.
Where did it seem I was saying that?
Read through what I said carefully?
We can play around with words and definitions till the cows come home, but the fact remains that ordinary gay men, i.e. men whose sexual attractions and relationships are with other adult males, and homosexual paedophiles, i.e. men who sexually molest male children, are two distinct categories. Yes, there is a degree of overlap between them, but it is small. You cite the names of Freund and Watson, but those researchers explicitly repudiated the notion that ordinary gay men (as defined above, and whom they referred to as “androphiles”) are more likely to sexually molest children than are ordinary heterosexual men (whom they referred to as “gynephiles”).
Dr Freund is no longer with us, but his co-researcher, whose real name is Robin Wilson, said in his memorial “Remembering Kurt Freund 1914 – 1996”:
“I would be remiss if I did not exploit this opportunity to publicly correct oft-misquoted research on which I collaborated with Dr. Freund. In 1989, we (along with Doug Rienzo) published ‘Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, and Erotic Age Preference’ (The Journal of Sex Research, 26, 107-117) and, in 1992, we published ‘The Proportions of Heterosexual and Homosexual Pedophiles Among Sex Offenders Against Children’ (Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 18, 34-43). These articles have frequently been cited by fundamentalist lobbyists as proof-positive that homosexuals are more inclined to molest children. This was not a finding of our research, period. What we found was that, among men with a sexual preference for children, there was an over-representation of men with a same-sex preference. … In all other research we conducted, we never found that androphilic (i.e., a preference for male adults) men had any greater relative erotic interest in children than did their gynephilic (i.e., a preference for female adults) peers.”
The last words of this quotation establish precisely the point its neologism-ridden verbiage tries to conceal: that male homosexual paedophilia is in fact much more common than heterosexual paedophilia, proportionate to the number of male homosexuals in society. Freund and Johnson claimed in 1992 that male on female sexual molestation of children was 11 times greater than male on male sexual molestation of children. Since male homosexuality is somewhere under 3% of the population, that means male homosexual paedophilia is about three times more common than male on female paedophilia.
James, this is a classic case where ‘common’ can mean 2 things.
(1) How many victims;
(2) How many instances per victim.
James:
Up to a third of cases of child sexual molestation are homosexual, i.e. same sex, so at least two thirds must be heterosexual. To say that “male homosexual paedophilia is about three times more common than male on female paedophilia” is therefore clearly nonsense: the latter is twice as common as the former. What Freund and Watson (not “Johnson”) found was that the proportion of male paedophiles with an erotic preference for male *children* was far greater than the proportion of male teleiophiles (adult-attracted men) with an erotic preference for male *adults*.
They did not find that the male homosexual paedophiles and the male homosexual teleiophiles (“ordinary gay men”) were generally the same category. On the contrary, they explicitly said that their research did *not* show this.
“The results of the present study suggest that the erotic attractiveness of male children (or pubescents) for androphiles is not greater than the erotic attractiveness of female children (or pubescents) to gynephiles”; “only rarely are sex offenders against male children diagnosed as androphiles.” (FREUND, WATSON & RIENZO, Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, and Erotic Age Preference, Journal of Sex Research, 1989)
“This, of course, should not be understood as saying that androphiles may have a greater propensity to offend against children than do gynephiles, a myth refuted in an earlier study” (FREUND & WATSON, The proportions of heterosexual and homosexual pedophiles among sex offenders against children: An exploratory study, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 1992).
W FIsher, you made exactly the same mistake I highlighted, not realising that we are dealing with 2 different types of quantity here:
(1) nos of abuse instances
(2) nos of abuse victims.
We can count victims first of all, but if we are counting instances, then the male-male proportion shoots up.
The word ‘homosexual’ means same sex, regardless of age.
Given the ”popularity” of adolescent males for both categories that you distinguish, how can one draw a clear line between them?
To take your three quotations one by one:
(1) The attractiveness of male children or pubescents to androphiles is not greater than the erotic attractiveness of female children or pubescents to gynephiles?
-Big deal. Most people would have already assumed that the two were about the same.
-What is the supposed significance of this point?
-To say ‘not greater’ as opposed to ‘the same’ confirms bias and defensiveness.
(2) Only rarely are sex offenders vs male children diagnosed as androphiles.
-Well, yes, because they are sick enough to shun adults for children only.
-Is this supposed to be a point in anyone’s favour??
(3) Androphiles’ propensity to offend is not greater than gynephiles’.
-Nor is it less, so where is the weight in this point.
-It is not a competition. How sick.
-See (1). This is much as everyone would already have assumed anyway.
James
Homosexual pedophilia is more common, but only if you count otherwise straight men who prey on make children as gay.
Drag Queens are mostly men who experience attraction to other men, who would not fall into this category
Yes, Mr Shell, I’m aware of those two “different types of quantity”, but if you’re going to claim on that basis that homosexual paedophilia is more common than heterosexual paedophilia, you need to show that more male children than female children get sexually molested by men, which you have not done. But even if that were the case, it still wouldn’t reflect on the vast majority of gay men, who never molest children.
Yes, Mr Shell, you can call men who sexually molest boys homosexuals if you like, and you have a good linguistic case for doing so, since they molest children whose sex is the same as theirs, and “same sex” is, of course, the literal meaning of the word “homosexual”.
That does not alter the fact, however, that the majority of such men are the kind of “homosexuals” who have no sexual interest in, or involvement with, other adult males, and whose sexual involvement with other adults, if they do have any, is most often with females. Furthermore, they are frequently found to have also molested girls (Vide e.g. MICHAEL SCHOFIELD, Sociological Aspects of Homosexuality, 1965. ABEL & HARLOW, The Stop Child Molestation Handbook, 2002).
The difference between homosexual teleiophiles and homosexual paedophiles is not invalidated by instances of member of both groups who have molested adolescent males, any more than the difference between heterosexual teleiophiles and heterosexual paedophiles is invalidated by instances of both groups who have molested adolescent females.
To take your three comments, Mr Shell, one by one:
(1) To say ‘not greater’ as opposed to ‘the same’ does not confirm any bias or defensiveness. It merely refutes the suggestion, so often put forward in the past as a phoney excuse for maltreating gay men, that in general they pose a greater danger to children or pubescents than heterosexual men do. They don’t.
(2) “Well, yes, because they are sick enough to shun adults for children only.”
A criticism which, of course, applies equally to sex offenders vs. female children. Rather than being “a point in anyone’s favour”, the point that “Only rarely are sex offenders vs male children diagnosed as androphiles” merely emphasizes the reality that ordinary gay men and men who molest boys are essentially two different groups and that the degree of overlap between them is small.
(3) No-one suggested or implied that it was meant to be a competition. It’s simply stating a fact, viz. that androphiles’ propensity to offend is not greater than gynephiles’. For its significance, see (1) above.
You’re doing your usual trick: trying to waffle away the facts, because they don’t suit your agenda, by raising rather tiresome irrelevancies. Sorry, Mr Shell, we’re not falling for it. We may be simple, but we’re not infants.
Christopher
So we’ve gone from gay men are infertile to gay men are really straight because many of them have biological children?!!
gay men are infertile
Which is something no one ever said.
S
Its repeatedly claimed that gay people cannot have children as a reason for refusing the right to marry
Its repeatedly claimed that gay people cannot have children as a reason for refusing the right to marry
But not that gay men are infertile. The point is that a same-sex couple cannot produce children even when both of the people in it are completely fertile.
S
Sorry to go back into this. My frustration is though that I’m in a same sex marriage with children and yet you are claiming that cannot exist! I know heaps of others in similar circumstances
it is suggested that it represents both overt misogyny and misandry. It queers both male and female in its conflation of binary generic sex.
Not only that, it exaggerates female stereotypes that queering denounces and despises and mocks.
And it’s not new. To normalise and attenuatuat by a reiterative process is to amplify and and embed the message:
https://theweeflea.com/2018/07/31/drag-queen-story-time/
And here from 2020:
https://theweeflea.com/2020/03/04/the-drag-queen-bandwagon-is-grooming-and-sexualising-our-children/
Geoff
Church leaders should not be accusing any other groups of being pedophiles until they have addressed their own organizations problems
There’s a lot of performative outrage in the comments here, it seems. And a convenenit ignorance (or naivete) about how sexualised drag was in the 60s, 70s , 80s and 90s Light Entertainimet. Not all drag artists were sexualised women. Les Dawson, resprising ‘Over the garden wall’ wasn’t, but his material was full of innuendo and, of course, his portrayal was a parody of middle-aged working-class womanhood. There were highly sexualised drag acts, such as Kenny Everett, who appeared on every early evening chat show and, if you don’t know his drag name, just google it. It’s every bit as offensive as any contemporary drag queen.
I’m not an apologist for this Light Entertainment. Much of it would, quite rightly, be unrepeatable today (even something as recent as ‘Little Britain’). And I worked for a very short time in BBC Light Entertainment – it wasa fairly toxic place.
But – and this is I believe very significant – all this material, like the drag queen story hours of today, is watched in the context of family and/or community. Whereas (most?) children in the UK have a device in their pocket or satchel which, in a couple of clicks, will access pornography. This they watch in private and one of the dangers is that it informs (and courrupts) their views of sex and sexuality. One outcome, which has been noticed is that many young men think that choking their partners is a ‘normal’ part of sexual intimacy, so that they don’t even bother to ask for consent. There are others, but I won’t go into detail here. The harms done by this are much more invidious and disabling than inappropriate innuendo. Perhaps this is why health and sex education in schools need to be so explicit these days, in an attempt to combat the misinformation and misrepresentation viewed in porn.
But where is the outcry? Yes, I get that it’s much easier to pick on a small discrete target like drag queens, than it is to take on multinational corruption (and destroy patriarchy and capitlism in the process). But where in the gospel does it say this is easy? (OK don’t Matthew 11.30 @ me)
Penny, so you agree that drag is sexualising, so presumably agree with the great concern about this being presented as ‘harmless’ in our schools, libraries and churches.
‘young men think that choking their partners is a ‘normal’ part of sexual intimacy’ Could you point me to any school, library or church which is portraying this as normal? If there is, I would be happy to lead the outcry.
Ian
Why do you think Drag is inherently sexualizing?
During covid I saw two outdoor drag shows by the same group. One was outside a bar and was by circumstance adults only, but neither featured any content that would be inappropriate for a child to see. It wasn’t even as sexual as Top of the Pops used to be.
I really do have a problem with this idea that Drag is a monolith or that skilled performers are incapable of moderating their performance to be suitable for children.
Years ago I saw Rolf Harris perform. We all thought he was a wholesome family entertainer.
But where is the outcry?
Well the Republicans that Peter Jermey disparages so much seem to have been having some success in the United Sates: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/08/age-law-online-porn-00110148
Presumably you approve?
Yes, I do. I don’t know whether age vercification works and my 10 year old grandson installed a VPN on my phone, so I’m sure there are work rounds. But, essentially, yes.
I don’t know whether age vercification works
Technically, it probably doesn’t, very well; but legally the law seems to be having the desired effect of making compliance too onerous to make pornographers’ continued operation in those jurisdictions economically unviable.
But at least you can admit the Republicans are doing some good things. Nice we agree on something.
We probably agree on lots of things.
Debate is adverserial which is why I think it’s a poor route to resolution.
Debate is adverserial which is why I think it’s a poor route to resolution.
What method do you suggest, other than debate, for finding out what the truth is on the matters where we disagree?
If you have a better method for finding the truth I will give it a try, but over the centuries no one has come up with one. That’s why, for example, criminal trials (where someone’s liberty might depend on correctly finding the truth) are structured as adversarial debates.
Debate can reach the truth – Council of Nicaea.
But, surely, it’s not the best method. Courts of Law don’t test truth. They test burden of proof.
Sometimes truth comes through revelation. or from the mind of a fine theologian or scientist.
But, surely, it’s not the best method. Courts of Law don’t test truth. They test burden of proof.
The job of a jury is to ascertain the truth of the facts in the case. And they do that by listening to an adversarial debate, and then deciding whether the prosecution has proved its case as to the truth of those facts.
Sometimes truth comes through revelation. or from the mind of a fine theologian or scientist.
And sometimes whacksdos imagine they hear the voice of God, and sometime fine scientists go potty and start spouting nonsense (there’s a long and noble tradition of Nobel prize-winners making right tits of themselves in their later years).
How can we distinguish the genuine revelations from the crackpots and mentalists? How can we work out whether the fine theologian or scientist is still at the top of their game, or has fallen off their rocker? How, indeed, do we tell the fine theologians and scientists from the idiots, shysters and scammers in the first place?
How else but by robust, adversarial debate? Like I say if you have a better suggestion I’ll give it a try but so far you haven’t come up with anything…
Debate is not adversarial. Ad hominem debate is adversarial.
Debate is not adversarial.
Debate is adversarial. ‘Adversarial’ means having two opposing sides in conflict, and that is what debate means.
‘Adversarial’ does not mean bad-tempered or personal. Criminal trials are adversarial but there are struct rules to stop them getting personal, and the opposing adversarial barristers can often be good friends.
Also you too seem to misunderstand what ‘argumentum ad hominem’ means. See https://www.psephizo.com/sexuality-2/general-synod-llf-and-the-mind-of-the-church-what-is-the-evidence/#comment-432700
No, debate is not adversarial, though it includes adversarial. Mostly in life there will not be 2 sides anyway. And where there are perceived to be precisely two sides, these (moreover) separated by an appreciable distance, we can be sure that attention to evidence is not how that point was arrived at.
You are surely not saying that issues where there are not precisely 2 sides (or: 2 polarised sides) can/should not be debated?
So what are you saying?
No, debate is not adversarial, though it includes adversarial.
Now you’ve stopped making sense. Debate is adversarial. That is the nature of debate. In a debate each side puts forward its best case, tries to rebut the other side’s points and to address any rebuttals against its own points. That is by nature and definition an adversarial process.
An example of a non-adversarial process would be, for example, the sides sitting down and instead of putting forward opposing cases, trying to do the Kissinger/Godsall method of coming up with an agreed statement that all could sign up to. But that wouldn’t actually get you any closer to the truth of the matter.
The best way we humans have ever found to get to the truth is adversarial debate.
Even science comes down to adversarial debate: when there are two (or more) competing theories, advocates of each go out and try to collect the evidence that will prove the other theory wrong by coming up with experiments that will falsify it. That’s an adversarial process because it is about proving the opposing point of view wrong.
I think what you are now describing is conventional formal debates. If such an approach were normalised for all debates it would be doomed to failure because
(1) it assumed only (and precisely) two options, which is absurd…
(2) those options being quite distant from one another, which compounds the absurdity (as though the evidence could point only in polarised directions, which would mean reality itself was not merely duplicitous but polarised);
(3) It begins with a position or conclusion, when obviously conclusions come at the end.
It does help explain why so few debates end up being conclusive (apart from in terms of a show of hands, which is not a marker of rigour but of persuasiveness, style and so on).
I think what you are now describing is conventional formal debates.
No, what I am describing is the concept of debate in general. That could be a debate in Parliament; it could be an exchange of letters, or a series of articles in a journal responding to each other; it could be a segment on a talk show or a more public discussion in the media, or it could be a friendly conversation at High Table.
Any debate necessarily involves sides (two or more) putting forward their best arguments, and rebutting the arguments of other sides, in order to make the most convincing case and so establish the truth. That is by definition an adversarial process because each side has adversaries (ie, the other sides) which they are trying to defeat (ie, prove their arguments unsound).
I think always of debating issues not of debating combatants.
Suppose I am involved in thrashing out an issue with someone else, trying to see what the best answer is and trying to get our heads round the issue. Inevitably we will not 100% agree. It is a process of rational argument. I am not allowed to call this a debate? What should I call it, then?
Also, you are exalting a less open minded model over a more open minded. And a binary over a…(I was going to say nonbinary).
I think always of debating issues not of debating combatants.
As you should. The ‘sides’ are not people, they are ideas.
Suppose I am involved in thrashing out an issue with someone else, trying to see what the best answer is and trying to get our heads round the issue. Inevitably we will not 100% agree. It is a process of rational argument. I am not allowed to call this a debate? What should I call it, then?
That is a debate, of course, and it is adversarial. One of you puts forward an idea; the other points out the flaws in it; you therefore dismiss that idea and move on to the next one. That’s the adversarial system of debate working as it should. Adversarial because it involves opposing ideas in conflict with each other, until the correct idea wins.
Also, you are exalting a less open minded model over a more open minded.
I have no idea what you mean by that.
Are you by any chance confusing ‘adversarial’ and ‘antagonistic’?
The ‘open-minded’ point is that I am imagining that people are not committed to any position, since if better evidence comes up they will always change their position. That is clearly better than being entrenched and impervious to reason.
‘Adversarial’ – I was probably thinking of the ‘enemy’ etymology.
The ‘open-minded’ point is that I am imagining that people are not committed to any position, since if better evidence comes up they will always change their position.
I don’t understand what this has to do with the question of debate being adversarial. Of course the whole point is that when the two sides have battled, each has brought out its best arguments, and one has proved the other unsound, then we adopt the one which has proven itself correct.
I wrote above that adversarial debate is the best tool we have for discovering the truth. I kind of thought it went without saying that once we had used it to discover the truth we should then align our view to the truth! Otherwise why did we go to all the bother of discovering it? But maybe I do have to spell that out.
‘Adversarial’ – I was probably thinking of the ‘enemy’ etymology.
Yes. Adversarial debate pits two (or more) sides against each other, in conflict. So they are enemies.
It doesn’t pit people against each other. Think again of a criminal trial. The adversarial Austen pits the prosecution’s case and the defence’s case against each other — but not the prosecutor and the defending barrister. They could swap places and the result would be the same. Often they are friends outside of work. The adversaries, the enemies, are the cases, not the people. Same with all truth-seeking adversarial debate.
Of course debates can be, or can get, antagonistic. But they don’t have to be. Whereas they are always, by their very nature, adversarial.
Indeed for adversarial debates to work it is sometimes — maybe even often — necessary for someone to argue, to the best of their ability, for a position they themselves do not hold. Barristers being the most obvious example, of course, but also any kind of ‘red team’ that is tasked within an organisation to try to demolish that organisation’s policy, with the end goal of coming up with the best possible version of a policy through an adversarial process. Even the Romans recognise this which is why they have the ‘Devil’s advocate’ in their canonisation process to put the contrary case as strongly as possible.
I think the thing is that you are framing it in terms of ‘two sides’ which is true only in terms (usually of participants). But
many debates have more than 2 participants.
If we really are prioritising ideas not participants like you said, then there are never ‘2 sides’ in terms of ideas.
I think the thing is that you are framing it in terms of ‘two sides’ which is true only in terms (usually of participants).
Only for simplicity of the examples. Nothing I have written depends on there being only two sides in any adversarial debate.
But many debates have more than 2 participants.
Yes. They are still adversarial.
If we really are prioritising ideas not participants like you said, then there are never ‘2 sides’ in terms of ideas.
Sometimes there are, when the debate is about a proposition which can only be either true or false.
Sometimes there aren’t.
But none of that has any bearing on whether the debate is adversarial.
Anyway, to go back to the original, the problem is that Penelope Cowell Doe isn’t interested in finding the truth. In terms of this article:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/
Penelope Cowell Doe is a paradigmatic ‘conflict theorist’, seeing all disagreements not as efforts to work out the truth but as attempts by one group to dominate another in society. Hence the attempts to avoid debate but instead smear opponents with terms such as ‘transphobe’. Those who interact with Penelope Cowell Doe in future must bear this in mind.
You are right and Christopher is wrong.
Debate is adverserial. Which is why it rarely a good route to truth.
A Court of Law may find the truth, but it exists to prove something beyond reasonable doubt (at least in criminal law). That is not truth.
Solutions are often reached after debate – sometimes by voting, sometimes by imposing the will of the stronger/majority. If truth is the result, that is luck or Providence.
On the evidence here I would argue that men (some especially) enjoy adverserial clashes more than women.
Which is why, as I have said before, very few women bother commenting here.
Those who do are mostly eirenic.
I’m not eirenic, but I think most debate of this kind is just willy waving.
It’s fun and harmless.
Until it’s not.
Which is when you and others start with the personal attacks.
So it’s back to reading some good evangelical theology.
Night.
You are right and Christopher is wrong.
Are you saying our adversarial debate has got to the truth?
Debate is adverserial. Which is why it rarely a good route to truth.
You still haven’t suggested a better route though. Go on.
A Court of Law may find the truth, but it exists to prove something beyond reasonable doubt (at least in criminal law). That is not truth.
It is most likely to be the truth.
On the evidence here I would argue that men (some especially) enjoy adverserial clashes more than women.
Enjoyment is irrelevant, as is the sex of the participants. When trying to find the truth only the arguments matter.
Anyway the point is you still haven’t come up with a better way to uncover the truth than by debate.
And I am interested, Penny, that you don’t appear at all sympathetic to the views of women I have shared here.
‘Perhaps this is why health and sex education in schools need to be so explicit these days’. And yet the effect of this, ISTM, is to make early sexual experience normalised. That in itself makes it hard for girls to say no to boys. ‘Come on, everyone’s doing it!’
Ian
I thought the most important reason for sex education was to educate kids about consent so that they are better able to say no?! And better equipped to protect themselves from predators.
I’m not a teacher, but I do have two teens. From my vantage point, the younger the generation the more likely they are to take consent seriously. It’s the 60+ generation don’t know how to respect boundaries, possibly because they weren’t taught this stuff when they were kids.
I thought the most important reason for sex education was to educate kids about consent so that they are better able to say no?!
Which is one of those ideas that sounds good but doesn’t work in practice. Teach kids that consent is all that matters and it just becomes a game of how can you convince someone that they consent, because once you can convince them they would like to have sex with you then you can tell them they have no reason for saying no. As soon as you can get someone to say ‘I’d like to have sex with you’ then you can say ‘well, you should then, you’ve consented and that makes it okay.’
Whereas if you teach them that there are considerations other than consent, then they have other arguments they can make: ‘I’d like to have sex with you but my parents wouldn’t approve’, ‘I’d like to have sex with you but I think we should wait until we’re marriage’, etc.
(Fortunately there are signs that the next generation might be figuring this out for themselves. But wouldn’t it have been better to give them a head start by teaching them that no, consent doesn’t just magically make everything okay?)
Well summarised. As I unpacked in What Are They Teaching The Children? the consent nonsense is sinister. And/or it emanates from people of the intelligence level that can see just one factor even when there are several.
I’ve never ever heard of a sex ed course that teaches that consent is all that matters! But that’s a great piece of spin about why we should keep kids vulnerable to predators! I don’t agree
Christopher
How many sexual abuse cases would not have happened had the child known that the adult wasn’t allowed to touch them without their consent?
Consent is really important. I don’t understand why conservatives oppose teaching about it
Sure, there was gross stuff in the 60 onwards a product of the sexual revolution, ” progressive society”, student unrest, sit ins, Monty Python’s Lumberjack song of smug rebellious satire of the ridiculous, for those who were “in” and those who didn’t get it were “square”.
And that has progressed to today, through the in – crowd influencers in the academy, arts and media: culture seeping into the church
Has it been noticed that a main burden of the article is within the church, the body of Christ, where there ought to be stronger boundaries, being not of this world, of course the unbeliving universalist liberal (even as they morph into sexual libertines as knowing or unknowing followers of Michael Foucault) revisionists, will pay no heed to Jesus and His warning
Matthew 18:5-7
1) I am entirely sympathetic to (most of) the views of the women you cited. I mostly don’t agree with them, but they have every right to express their discomfort with drag and drag can be misogynistic. I am less sympathetic to women who have an agenda which includes using transphobic slurs to critique something which is nothing to do with being trans.
2) There has always been pressure, mainly from boys to girls, to engage in sex. Have you any evidence that it has got worse? Or that RHSE is making it worse? Is pornography itself not to blame for increased pressure and for unrealstic or dangerous expectations about what sex might entail?
3) Sorry, your first point – no, as I pointed out, I don’t think drag or all sexual innuendo is harmful. There was some racist, sexist and ableist Light Entertainment in the second half of the 20thC, but there was also a lot of harmless transgression and smutty fun (if you like smut, a lot of people don’t).
4) I think you might be missing my point about potentially harmful sexual activities. Which was that drag story hours and Light Entertainment shows are viewed by families/communities and that watching porn is often a private activity. The gateway to these activities is in the pockets of children in churches, libraries and classrooms. We can’t remove this access. I am asking why we aren’t more concerned about this.
Have you any evidence that it has got worse? Or that RHSE is making it worse? Is pornography itself not to blame for increased pressure and for unrealstic or dangerous expectations about what sex might entail?
It is possible for there to be a problem, and for the attempts to address the problem to end up not only not fixing the problem but making the worse, you know.
I think you might be missing my point about potentially harmful sexual activities. Which was that drag story hours and Light Entertainment shows are viewed by families/communities and that watching porn is often a private activity.
The fact that something is done as a family doesn’t necessarily make it better; indeed it can contribute to making the thing seem normal and acceptable (‘my parents think it’s okay, what could be wrong with it’) whereas the kid who furtively looks at pornography at least knows, by the very fact they have to hide it, that they are doing something wrong.
Presumably you agree that if a child is going to access pornography it is better if they have to do so in secret and know that their parents disapprove, than that their parents openly watch pornography in front of their children and treat it as something normal?
The gateway to these activities is in the pockets of children in churches, libraries and classrooms. We can’t remove this access. I am asking why we aren’t more concerned about this.
I think people are very concerned! Hence the efforts to find some legislative way to curtail the pornographers’ activities (efforts fiercely resisted by the ‘sex work is work’ brigade, I might add, who you often find yourself on the same side as — and if we were as given as you are to guilt-by-association arguments we could point that out as much as you point out that we find ourselves on the same side as right-wing Americans)
S
There’s no attempt by right wing Americans (Republicans) to stop children accessing porn.
I’m sure there was decades ago, but currently they are focused on restricting LGBT freedoms and restricting racial equality. They aren’t interested in real problems
There’s no attempt by right wing Americans (Republicans) to stop children accessing porn.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/08/age-law-online-porn-00110148
says different. And not just an attempt, but a successful attempt.
S
Yeah but this is the equivalent of one MSP raising it as an issue. Porn is not an issue that Republicans are collectively campaigning on, unlike Drag
Yeah but this is the equivalent of one MSP raising it as an issue.
No it’s not; it’s a law that was put forward by a state Republican party, passed, and is now having an effect. Not just one lone voice but a whole state legislative party, indeed, multiple whole state legislative parties.
Porn is not an issue that Republicans are collectively campaigning on, unlike Drag
What do you mean by ‘collectively’? Obviously it would be inappropriate for them to campaign on it at a national level because such laws are the responsibility of individual states, it would be totally inappropriate for the congress to get involved.
S
Your article says it came from a lone state legislator.
I’ve seen a LOT of election interviews and porn is never mentioned. Lgbt rights, black rights, gun restrictions, immigration, UFOs, yes.
Your article says it came from a lone state legislator.
Did you read past the first sentence?
‘ the bill sailed through the Louisiana House 96-1 and the State Senate 34-0’.
Yes. I read the article. It came from an individual. Like a private members bill in the UK parliament
Yes. I read the article. It came from an individual. Like a private members bill in the UK parliament
It became a law. Private members bills do not become law, unless the governing party backs them. The fact it became a law proves that it was backed by the governing party, ie, the Republicans. And so does the fact that they all voted for it.
S
But so did lots of Democrats
Its not an issue Republicans are campaigning on
Penelope
4. I want to be clear that Im certain the majority of people caught up in the movement against Drag are oblivious to its true nature. Genuinely this wave of anti Drag movement has nothing to do with protecting children, that’s why the same people are doing nothing about porn or (this is a US led movement) gun violence in schools or even children access to sexual content. That’s why none of them care that small children are being told that their parents are pedophiles and should be executed because their parents are LGBT or took their kids to an LGBT event.
It’s harder and harder to legally argue that LGBT people should not have the same rights as others. This latest tactic is to make recieved wisdom be that LGBT people are a danger to society and by granting them rights, it harms other subjugated groups rights – they tried African Americans (that didn’t work well), they tried women (but women didn’t agree), but they’ve been successful with children because people are understandably emotional about harming children
I know Pete. There’s a frightening backlash against ‘liberalism’ and science (vaccines, climate science etc.) in the US and it’s coming to Europe.
Things we have taken for granted are being eroded.
Things which couldn’t have been said a few years ago are now being trumpeted as ‘free speech’.
It’s hideous.
Things which couldn’t have been said a few years ago are now being trumpeted as ‘free speech’.
Such as?
Penny is fantasising and projecting again. The reality is the precise opposite because the police will now arrest people for reading the Bible out loud in Britain. Seven Yorkshire police will arrest an autistic 16 year old girl for saying to a woman cop with cropped hair “You look like my lesbian nana”. Protest about drag queens associted with Darren Moore sexualising children at the Tate Gallery and you get arreted.
The philosopher Edward Feser has a recent piece (28 July 2023) in his blog on the recent custom in some social science or political culture circles of slipping in evident falsehoods into discourses. It’s called ‘Searle and Stove on the Rhetorical Subversion of Comon Sense ” and involves using “a sudden and violent solecism” and this is what Penny has done here.
The philosopher Edward Feser has a recent piece (28 July 2023) in his blog on the recent custom in some social science or political culture circles of slipping in evident falsehoods into discourses. It’s called ‘Searle and Stove on the Rhetorical Subversion of Comon Sense ” and involves using “a sudden and violent solecism” and this is what Penny has done here.
Thank you! That’s a fascinating article with lots of relevant points (what is ‘transphobia’ but exactly the application of ‘give-it-a-name’ to the obviously correct idea that there are exactly two sexes and humans can’t change from one to the other?).
But this is why people need to challenge such absurd claims, so I would still like to see just one example from Penelope Cowell Doe of something that ‘couldn’t have been said’ say, twenty-five years ago that is now ‘trumpeted as free speech’.
Everybody remember to watch out for these manoeuvres! And challenge them!
An account called gas_the_jews has just been suspended from Twitter.
Racist and misogynistic discourse has become much more common – especially on social meida – on the past 10 years.
Brexit and this governments’s lurch to the right has certainly enabled bigots of the racist sort to pop their ugly heads above the parapet.
I’m not sure about the misogyny. It’s always been there of course in the toxic stew of patriacrhal discourses, but until recently it was concealed by a veneer of ‘political correctness’. It’s bubbling to the surface now.
An account called gas_the_jews has just been suspended from Twitter.
You think there was no anti-sematism a few years ago? Boy do I have news for you.
Racist and misogynistic discourse has become much more common – especially on social meida – on the past 10 years.
Social media barely existed ten years ago, so everything is more has become more common on social media in the last ten years. Racism and misogyny, on the other hand, were perfectly common ten years ago, and were certainly far more common twenty or thirty years ago than they are now. Twenty years ago prime-time BBC 1 comedy shows could feature actors with darkened faces, for example — something that would never happen today.
Brexit and this governments’s lurch to the right has certainly enabled bigots of the racist sort to pop their ugly heads above the parapet.
This government is probably the most left-wing government the country has had since Callaghan, so I don’t know where you get ‘lurch to the right’ from. But again, there is nothing racist that you couldn’t say, say, twenty years ago that you could freely say today. Indeed quite the reverse: racist things that people could and did say freely twenty years ago would today end their careers.
I’m not sure about the misogyny.
Similarly, there is much less public tolerance for sexism than there was twenty years ago. Just think of the things that were seen as perfectly acceptable back then but are utterly beyond the pale now, from page three of the Sun through Loaded and Nuts to, heck, the ‘Hello Boys’ advert.
So come on then, one real example of something that ‘couldn’t have been said a few years ago [which is] now being trumpeted as “free speech”’. You claimed there were multiple such things. Give us just one!
S
I’ve just given you one. There was always plenty of bigotry around, but it has been enabled by ‘something’ in the last few years.
And if you think social media wasn’t big in 2013, you must have been living under a stone. So you won’t have seen the number of times women are threatened with rape and violence.
I’ve just given you one. There was always plenty of bigotry around, but it has been enabled by ‘something’ in the last few years.
No, you haven’t. There’s nothing you mentioned that couldn’t have been said ten or twenty years ago, and that’s what you claimed.
And if you think social media wasn’t big in 2013, you must have been living under a stone.
In 2013 Twitter and Facebook were basically the only games in town (Instagram had launched in 2010, and Snapchat in 2011); Twitter had only just reached half its current number of users. So it was getting big, but got a lot bigger over the next decade; so everything on it has increased.
But the point is you claimed there were ‘things that couldn’t be said’. What ‘couldn’t be said’ on Twitter in 2013? Remember back then Twitter was still describing itself as ‘the free speech wing of the free speech party’ ( https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/mar/22/twitter-tony-wang-free-speech )
So you won’t have seen the number of times women are threatened with rape and violence.
You don’t know what I have or haven’t seen, because personal experience is irrelevant. You made a claim. You can’t back it up with evidence.
S
I think #1 is that (scientific) expertise and data used to be a bedrock of informing policy and its now being rejected in favor of conspiracy theories. Social media has encouraged everyone to believe our opinion is important, even on subjects that we have no qualifications or experience.
For example, our congress has found no time to even debate measures to stop gun violence, which us the number one killer of children and young adults in the US, but there has been plenty of time to hold hearings on whether the US military covered up an alien autopsy.
We also saw this during covid. There was significant political pressure to treat conspiracy theories (vaccines make you magnetic) with the same seriousness as expert medical advice (vaccines reduce your chances of serious illness)
I didn’t see one single example there of ‘things which couldn’t have been said a few years ago [which] are now being trumpeted as ‘free speech’’.
You mention conspiracy theories. I remember the nineties, when the media was full of conspiracy theories. Roswell, of course. Area 51. Chemtrails. Crop circles. Moon landings faked, the CIA killed Kennedy. You mention vaccines? The US government used the smallpox vaccination programme to secretly build up a tracking database of the population, that’s a real conspiracy theory from back then. Or how about the US government created AIDS? Another ’90s classic. And all the usual anti-semitic conspiracy theories were still going around back then and, sadly, still are today: Israeli super-weapons, Jewish financiers controlling the markets, etc etc.
So no, I’m afraid conspiracy theories are definitly not an example of ‘things which couldn’t have been said a few years ago [which] are now being trumpeted as ‘free speech’.’ Conspiracy theories certainly could be and indeed were being said a few years ago.
I was protested twice during my job working for the Met Office. Once by chemtrail people and once by Christians (they didn’t say what they were upset with us about only assumed that we were all bany eating devil worshippers and condemned us without right of reply). So i know the chemtrail theory well. That was 10 years ago. Congress has just held hearings over whether the US military covered up an alien autopsy.
It’s not just that these conspiracy theories are alive and well, but that they are being taken more seriously now than reality by many of our political leaders
I was protested twice during my job working for the Met Office. Once by chemtrail people
Right, so you know that conspiracy theories are not an example of ‘things which couldn’t have been said a few years ago [which] are now being trumpeted as ‘free speech’’.’
It’s not just that these conspiracy theories are alive and well, but that they are being taken more seriously now than reality by many of our political leaders
But that’s got nothing to do with Penelope Cowell Doe’s claim that ‘things which couldn’t have been said a few years ago are now being trumpeted as ‘free speech’’.’
I asked for an example of such a thing. This is, an example of something which:
1. couldn’t have been said a few years ago
and
(b) is now being trumpeted as ‘free speech’
Conspiracy theories are clearly not an example because they obviously could have been said a few years ago, as evidenced by the fact they were being said a few years ago, as evidenced by the fact you remember them being said a few years ago.
So do you have any actual examples? Or is Penelope Cowell Doe’s claim rubbish?
S
I’m not Penelope, but I would say its more that things that were socially unacceptable (overt racism, homophobia, anti semitism) are now being treated as valid opinion and are sometimes even openly held by leading politicians.
Sunak has apparently been making some quite horrific trans “jokes”. Tony Blair wouldn’t have done that, even though it was an era when LGBT had far fewer freedoms than now.
Similarly both Ron Desantis and Mike Pence are both known for homophobia, but Mike Pence played down his homophobic policies whereas Sedan his plays them up!
These are the changes I see! I think in the UK brexit has a lot to answer for since it led the major broadcasters to treat Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage like they were serious politicians and not just bullies in want of a target
I’m not Penelope, but I would say its more that things that were socially unacceptable (overt racism, homophobia, anti semitism) are now being treated as valid opinion and are sometimes even openly held by leading politicians.
That’s not what Penelope Cowell Doe wrote, though.
But even if it is, please point to one example of a view that was socially unacceptable, say, twenty years ago, that is now being openly held by leading politicians.
Sunak has apparently been making some quite horrific trans “jokes”.
Evidence and specifics please.
I think in the UK brexit has a lot to answer for since it led the major broadcasters to treat Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage like they were serious politicians and not just bullies in want of a target
Johnson and Farage have both led parties that won national elections. I think you can’t deny that that makes them ‘serious politicians’, even if you disagree with them.
(In Farage’s case he did it twice with different parties, which is a record!)
S
I already gave you lots of examples
S
Political success doesn’t make someone serious about government.
‘….a woman to dress as a man and act out clichés of toxic masculinity…” See French and Saunders here: https://youtu.be/THr2_eyPsug
Challenging to watch….
Rachel – I decline to watch the video you linked to, because I took a decision about French and Saunders back in 1982 (when I was 16 years old) – which is that the pair of them are pure filth. Since you seem to be presenting yourself as an ecclesiastical person, I’m amazed that you didn’t reach the same conclusion.
Back then, I saw them in ‘The Comic Strip’ take-off of the Famous Five. Some aspects were very funny, but they also stuck in some lurid sexual innuendo – and also explicit sexuality, just for laughs. I was presented with a challenging problem – some aspects were very funny (mimicking the Enid Blyton prose). Should I overlook the fact that they were clearly ‘of the world’ and so lost that they couldn’t even see that the other stuff they had stuck in there was utterly revolting? Or was this the sort of thing that should be cut out like a cancer?
Back then (aged 16), after some thought (it took a while), I decided that these people knew exactly what they were doing – that therefore they had rejected Him – and that there was absolutely no place for this sort of lurid spectacle as entertainment for those of us who were ‘in Him.’ It’s simply not on to take the good and entertaining bits, while overlooking and ignoring the innuendo and seedy sexuality.
So I’m amazed that someone who presents themselves as Christian can advocate anything produced by these people as something worth watching.
They took off the Famous Five because they had to fight against anything innocent. THAT was the enemy.
(!)
As for ‘lashings of ginger beer’, that was
(a) the only part of the Famous Five that many now remember;
(b) nowhere in the text, only in the 1970s parody Five Go Mad in Dorset.
Children still lap them up – the combination of easy style that gets them liking reading; adventure; articulacy; enjoying the world in a simple way; right and wrong.
Jock, I do not think that Rachel is advocating it.
Chris – thanks and Rachel – apologies if I misunderstood it.
Yes – as I indicated above, I’m very grateful to Ian Paul, Mike Starkey and others for doing all the horrible, but necessary work that needs to be done to understand the face of evil, so that we know what we’re up against, especially when it starts to infiltrate the church (which is what Mike Starkey’s article is all about). Rachel is exploring another face of this evil.
As I indicated, the challenging decision for me was back in 1982 – when much of what passed for entertainment (and I gave a specific example of a programme where French and Saunders were two of the main characters) contained elements that were highly entertaining, but at the same time there was behind it a very sick and twisted agenda. Should I try to overlook the sick and twisted agenda – reasoning that these people were unenlightened, overlook the squalor and enjoy the entertaining bits? Or should everything that dealt with sexual innuendo or served up an explicitly sexual agenda simply be cut out like a cancer? I decided on the latter – and, in the case of the example that I brought up, Christopher Shell eloquently and succinctly described why it was pure evil, from people who knew what they were doing.
These are people that Christians avoid, although possibly we do need people on the ‘front line’ so that we know what we are up against.
‘Drag’ performances have recently escalated notably.
This combined with a numerical bias towards ‘drag’ performances specifically to children.
Are people really so dense that they cannot see the concerted/orchestrated trajectory here?
That is correct. It is all about normalising paraphilia to pre-school children by sexualising them. The great majority of these drag queens are homosexual men who want access to small children.
The correct term for this is grooming.
Got it in one.
Men don’t need to dress up as women to be groomers.
They can cosplay as High Anglican Monastics or as evangelicals for the male elite.
It’s been rather effective in the past.
Seems to be quite popular currently too. And not a drag queen in sight.
Men don’t need to dress up as women to be groomers.
And people don’t need guns to commit murder — they can stab people with knives instead — so we should repeal all gun control legislation and sell Glocks in supermarkets.
That’s your argument right?
PCD, that is employment, yet again, of the tu quoque fallacy.
Geoff
It isn’t.
It isn’t.
Correct. It’s actually whataboutery.
PCD, here,
Is not addressing the oringinal claim, as set out in Mike’s article and as headlined by Ian, a typical ploy, in denial.
PCD,
Additionally, it is not relevant to the topic of the article and headline, that is, it is not logically probative of the fact in issue. It would therby be inadmissible at law in any claim.
Is not addressing the oringinal claim
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
Penny writes: “Men don’t need to dress up as women to be groomers.
They can cosplay as High Anglican Monastics or as evangelicals for the male elite.”
More logical confusion here. The genuine reason for being a High Anglican Monastic is to be a High Anglican Monastic. The genuine reason for being an evangelical youth leader is to be an evangelical youth leader. That some do not live up to their calling and hurt the young is the oldest story in the world.
What is the intrinsic point of being a drag queen? To pretend to be what you are not and to give an exaggerated and mocking view of women from the uncomprehending and misogynistic homosexual male point of view.
What is the point of drag queens doing “story hour” for small children? To allow the drag queens access to small children, to confuse their infantile thinking and to sexualise them. It’s just evil. I’m surprised that you, a mother and grandmother, can’t see this.
James
I strongly disagree with your aetiology of drag. Camp has always been transgressive and parodic, but that does not entail misogyny nor paedopihilia as an inevitable consequence.
Some drag queens are misogynistic as are some gay men. Some gay women are misandrist.
Some evangelical man are misogynistic as are some AC men.
The intrinsic point of being a drag queen is no more paedophilia than is the intrinsic point of being a conservative evangelical or an AC priest. Though, frankly I’d rather my grandson was in company with drag queens than with men who encouraged young men to swim naked with them.
Camp has always been transgressive and parodic, but that does not entail misogyny nor paedopihilia as an inevitable consequence.
Do you not think, though, that something which transgresses boundaries by its very nature is likely to attract the kind of people who want to transgress other boundaries, eg, the boundary that says you shouldn’t have sex with children?
I don’t think it’s controversial to point out that you very rarely find subcultures which transgress only one boundary. Generally if a subculture is transgressive it is transgressive in all ways, or at least in multiple related ways, because that’s the nature of attracting people who are into transgressing boundaries — it’s often not so much the transgressing of a particular boundary that excites such people as the frisson of being transgressive .
The transgressive subculture then becomes the ideal hiding-place and cover for those who do wish to transgress particular boundaries, eg, the boundary against sex with children.
It’s happened before, with the Paedophile Information Exchange group infiltrating the gay-rights movement in the eighties. Could it not happen again?
And it’s also about mocking weak Christians for allowing it to happen in plain sight.
Don’t think it is dense, ignorant, but a triad of, frivolous, vexatious and mendacious, the employment of sophistry.
There will be those on this site who are of the boomer generation (b. 1946-64) who will recognise, PCD’s inversion to the truth, with lockdown, policing, of thought, today, where offense is redefined as hatred and becomes an offense, crime.
Yet where LGBT comedians get a mainstream terrestial TV (BBC ?) Programme, Live at the Appolo, in the name of cutting edge equality.
It seems that there is no equality in offense taking and making, where to be inclusive is to be given freedom of speech to make offense in mangling and manipulating of language. And a free pass when it comes to not answering key questions along with the self-gratification, and pride in the looking of free-thinkers. How rebellious; how 6O’s, 70’s; how less snowflake, than stone – centred snowball; how Genesis, to the core.
Geoff
Drag Queens and Kings have been on BBC prime time all of my lifetime.
Two Ronnies, French and Saunders, Kathy Burke, Dame Edna. Its a staple of British entertainment
Christopher
The whole point of Drag Queen story time is to encourage an awareness of diversity and encourage inclusive behavior amongst small children whose parents want them to learn those things. The Drag Queen reads them a age appropriate story book on that theme
You certainly seem to disagree with these values, but they aren’t secret or sinister.
Even by your standards its not as “harmful” as a pantomime dame joking about her private parts or sex life!
‘The whole point of Drag Queen story time is to encourage an awareness of diversity and encourage inclusive behavior’ No, the whole point of drag, historically, is to challenge the biological reality of sex difference.
Ian
Sorry but you are provably wrong about DQSH. I don’t understand why not just ask someone involved in the movement if you don’t know?
I asked you before about the biological reality that not every person is XX or XY and how that fit with your theology that everyone is either 100% man or 100% woman. I asked because is it’s better to ask questions than make assumptions. Unfortunately I didn’t get an answer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_Queen_Story_Hour#:~:text=Drag%20Queen%20Story%20Hour%20(DQSH,of%20promoting%20reading%20and%20diversity.
You do know this is nonsense don’t you?
I don’t deny drag is transgressive, but it has never denied sexual difference.
Rather the reverse I would have thought.
Hello Christopher,
(The link is a catalyst for tgis comment.)
Weren’t you a speaker?
What is clear to me, there is, in the CoE, overt declension after 5 or so years.
Ian, here, proposed that was not irreversible? Are you still so minded Ian?
Especially in light of the then CNC criticism of the lack in Bishops, a lack, which if recent discussions on this blog site are anything to go by, has been heavily negatively exacerbated.
In that same time period, that I’ve visted this site, the declension, is far more in evidence and widespread, with an intellectual, philosophical, rooted sameness, of a culturally conformed clique.
It culls belief that present incumbents would highlight and oppose publically what this present article, coherently and cogently draws attention to and emphasises, either in the church or House of Lords.
It is less woke than addled at the wheel; less of being on the right side of history, than remaining on the right side of history and in eternity.
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/psephizo-does-theology-matter-in-the-church-of-england-anymoreexecute1/124654.htm
Not a speaker, no.
Laughter.
“Laughter is a highly sophisticated social signally system.” (see link)
Mike’s article may raise up a further conjoined topics.
1 Does Christian sanctification exclude laughter?
A movement from ” the laughter of unbelief to the laughter of faith”; from ” laughter to mourning”; from “weeping to laughter”.
(“One day we will laugh forever, and like never before.” David C Mathis)
2 What makes God laugh? Presupposing he does.
Opening gambit here:
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/god-laughs-out-loud-to-quiet-our-fears davidcmathis
Geoff,
That reminds me Isaac means laughter. Isaac was a type of Christ. Does Jesus mean laughter.?
Steve, it is only in Jesus, that, “One day we will laugh forever, and like never before.” Mathis.
Which brings to mind that in the mid 90’s in some Christian gatherings there was a breakout of infectious, mirth and laughter, a release into the joy in the Holy Spirit.
A foretaste, methinks.
I mentioned earlier that I’ve been getting private messages from women in ‘inclusive’ churches saying they find today’s drag aggressive and demeaning, but they daren’t speak out for fear of being labelled far right, or losing their job.
I’m now getting private messages from gay people saying they how much they dislike what drag has become – but again feel they can’t say it publicly.
So interesting.
Penny writes: “The intrinsic point of being a drag queen is no more paedophilia than is the intrinsic point of being a conservative evangelical or an AC priest. ”
Well, what is the “intrinsic point of being a drag queen”? It is to mock women as oversexed outrageous characters, principally from a male homosexual point of view. Deeply misogynistic and deeply un-Christian. Nothing to do with the new life in Jesus Christ. Everything to do with perversion. How do do you feel about blackface? The purpose of that is to mock black people. Also deeply un-Christian.
“Though, frankly I’d rather my grandson was in company with drag queens than with men who encouraged young men to swim naked with them.”
What a strange comment. I would never have let my son swim naked with a “youth leader”. I have no tolerance for the poor standards in safeguarding and the poor sense of limits that were allowed in some evangelical youth movements – just as I was outraged by the actual criminal behaviour of Bishop Peter Ball and Archbishop George Carey’s inability to see the wrong. I can tell you that I worked for some years as a teacher and any teacher who crossed boundaries the way Pilavachi did would have been sacked on the spot.
Fletcher’s behaviour was also obviously reprehensible and only escaped legal consequences because the young men were over 18. The rules are really quite simple: avoid being alone with a vulnerable person if you can; avoid unnecessary physical contact; avoid unprofessional messages that you wouldn’t want parents to see.
If you are saying there are serious weaknesses in the Church of England’s safeguarding practices, I heartily agree. I find it disturbing that while Pilavachi’s line manager Andy Croft resigned over failure to keep tabs on Pilavachi, Croft’s father Steven, the Bishop of Oxford, has hung on to his job, despite his admitted failures to act over the actual serious crimes committed by Trevor Devanimakkan. These scandals continue because the Church of England is mesmerised by power and hierarchy.
Thank you James for taking the time to answer PCD presentation of a false dichotomy, based on her belief systems, in an attempt to sidetrack and sideline the import of the article. It is not either/or.
It is suggested that all in a position of leadership in the church have a fiduciary of care and to minors, effectively stand in a position of being in loco parentis. As you set out, it is much simpler and the CoE seems to have a collective inability to understand and make it happen.
https://effectiviology.com/false-dilemma/
James
Drag is not mocking women any more than Hyacinth Bucket is mocking women.
Of course it is. The Hyacinth Bucket character is at least played by a woman. Stop trying to defend the maligning and mocking of women.
So if a man plays a woman then he is mocking all women?
If a man plays an exaggeratedly sexualised woman (hair, makeup, bosom etc) he’s mocking female sexuality.
Why do homosexual men want to pretend to be women anyway?
Is it fear of women and female sexuality?
Is it because of homosexual insecurity toward women? I find the whole drag phenomenon misogynistic and unhealthy.
But then I believe in Natural Law.
James
Again not all Drag is sexual, nor is it about mocking women. Indeed quite a few women do drag.
I don’t do drag so I can’t really answer for why gay men in particular want to do drag, altDrag. I’m sure there are many reasons. I was just reading that a single mother went in Drag to a school event so her child didn’t miss out on “Dads and donuts”
I could speculate that some gay men feel more comfortable adopting a diva persona to perform under than being themselves. I’d suspect this especially true for gay men who have stereotypically female facial characteristics. But this is not something I feel qualified to answer on.
PJ, In the context of Mike’s article, that is a false equivalent.
Geoff
No it isn’t
I picked Hyacinth for a reason! She is a favorite of gay men because she is the sort of OTT characature you see in drag. Its not a mockery of women.
Exactly. The abusers were men. Ordinary but elite. Encouraging, as you say, questionable activities disguised as healthy male sport and play.
Not drag queens. Who are certainly not all sexualised not misogynistic.
Watch out for the ordinary men. Not the extraordinary ones.
I did witness a man at church once fall laughing uncontrollably to the floor during an evening service. He was a solicitor. Did him a power of good. I think.
Steve,
King David was a far more undignified embarrassment, to his wife, than the solicitor would be an embarressment to the profession, bringing it into disrepute. (Though I’m not really sure about that.!) More of an embarrassment to the church, I think.
The bride of Christ is embarrassed over the fact that it was for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Hebrews 12:2
it was during the Toronto thing Geoff.
We need something akin today.
BTW, I was rethinking my explosion comment from a while ago. The epicentre is where the action is. A small number. Surrounding it is a larger doughnut of influence.
I think every denomination has the small active centre and its sphere of influence surrounding it. The church in Acts was like that. Perhaps, what we think of as ‘church’ today is just a well organised, self identifying doughnut of hangers on. Sort of like the rings of Saturn, shepherded by bishops etc from getting too close or too far from the centre. It was ever thus.
Hi
https://www.neverthirsty.org/bible-qa/qa-archives/question/can-men-wear-womens-clothes-what-does-deuteronomy-225-mean/
Enough said , repent your souls are at stake
Peter