Drag Shows Are Safe Places
Real Groomers Are Hiding Behind Pulpits
The fringe right has decided that drag queens are an issue worth exploiting as fear-a-ganda. They’ve been shutting down libraries for including books in their collection portraying various approaches to sexuality as part of the human condition. Schools are cracking down on teachers suspected of being one of “them.” History is being sanitized to exclude students understanding empathy.
The tough guys with the Proud Boys have been muscling their way into libraries and cafes to threaten people and spew hate. What are they hating? Something they don’t understand, but if you pressed them, they’d say something about youths being molested.
The real problem here is that they’re looking in all the wrong places. I’m not going to pretend that whatever perversion they're dreaming of hasn’t happened. It’s just that the targets they’ve picked aren’t particularly high value, especially if the goal is to prevent unwanted sexual contact.
Over the past few years, parts of the rightist conspiracy set have been obsessed with fantastical stories, all of which involve deflowering of innocents. Hillary Clinton was at the heart of one of these whackadoodle tales; COVID19 is another. They have attention getting value because people are naturally protective of underaged persons.
All this fear mongering is based on the premise that innocent youth are being lured into sexual encounters by “others.” It’s an old trope, one that’s been applied to migrants and minorities throughout US history. Black men scheming to molest white women was a justification for lynchings and/or incarceration throughout the 20th century.
Texas and Florida have had the most high-profile incidents regarding sexuality recently. In the interest of keeping it simple, I’m going to write about Texas today, mainly because of the fury I feel over Gov. Abbott sending buses full of migrants over the Christmas holiday to dump on the sidewalks outside VP Kamala Harris’ residence in DC.
If these Proud Boys were serious, they’d be getting religion. Or at least hanging around churches.
Researcher Teddy Wilson (Substack Link Here) who tracks this and other behavior by extremists, dug into a couple of years worth of stories from Texas alone.
In Temple, Texas: "At least six local pastors and teachers were named among the hundreds of Baptist leaders accused or found guilty of sexual abuse of children"
Jonathan Ryan Ensey "a pastor’s son and Conroe church worship leader was sentenced to prison... convicted of victimizing a congregant by committing indecency with a child and online solicitation of a minor.
In Austin, Texas: "At least five Austin-area pastors and teachers were named among the hundreds of Baptist leaders accused or found guilty of sexual abuse of children."
Conrad Estrada Valdez, pastor at The Restoration Outreach Christian Church, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the "sexual assault of a child between the ages of 14 and 17."
Aaron Duane Shipman, lead pastor at Bible Baptist Church in Odessa, allegedly “sexually assaulted a teenage girl for years beginning when she was 16.”
Brian Pounds, minister at First Assembly of God in Vernon, is “accused of giving meth to a 15-year-old girl and raping her at church.”
David Lloyd Walther, pastor for the Faith Baptist Church in Round Rock, "charged with distribution, receipt, transportation and possession of child pornography."
Conner Jesse Penny, youth pastor at the Inspiration Church in Mesquite, was “charged with one count of Continuous Sexual Abuse of a Child, one count of Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child, and one count of Indecency with a Child.
Robert Shiflet, a former Denton Bible Church youth pastor, “sexually abused 14 girls at two different churches” and investigation revealed “the red flags the church ignored.”
Timothy Jason Jeltema, student minister at Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston, "sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to online sexual abuse of a child."
William C. Robinson, a pastor working for Chi Alpha Campus Ministries in Corpus Christi, " charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony."
Chad Michael Rider was convicted for collaborating with former Denison Church of the Nazarene pastor David Pettigrew, and persuading "minors into taking sexually explicit photographs."
Lawrence Hopkins, associate pastor at Rollingbrook Fellowship in Baytown, was arrested and "accused of soliciting a minor."
Now my point in listing all these crimes is NOT to denigrate religion in general or churches in particular. Sexual harassment AND abuse both occur primarily in situations where one individual has perceived authority and the ability to control the environment.
Churches just tend to present many opportunities, as investigations by numerous congregations in recent years have shown.
Contrast the settings an individual would find themselves in at a religious site as opposed to a café or library. Other settings like schools and even sports leagues are also more structured.
I’ve got to note here that I don’t see much organized religious participation in the specific harassment campaigns being waged against LGBTQ+ individuals and communities. There are indirect connections in that many right wing extremists are so-called Christian nationalists and the “purity” standards adopted by some evangelical churches. And there are the “moral values” coming from the pulpit and the televangelical studio.
So once you understand that the basic conditions for the kinds of “groomer” behaviors aren’t being met by drag shows (which go back to the Grecian era), and there isn’t a much of a public record of such actions, then the question becomes “why?”
Certainly homophobia is a big part of these hostile behaviors. But it’s part of a bigger picture, namely the movement against secular and “liberalized” Western European thought.
The erosion of patriarchal and racial controlling mechanisms has enabled more diverse participation in society, along with a lessening of the powers vested in traditionalist circles. The last fifty years have seen the emergence of political forces seeking to reverse changes.
If you look at much of today’s Republican party through that lens, their affinity for autocratic rulers in Hungary and Russia becomes more understandable. Indeed, the contradiction between democracy (in its various forms) and authoritarian rule is the basis of much of the conflict between governments.
This isn’t just about LGBTQ+ humans. It’s about ownership of the commons. It’s about criminalization as a solution for social problems. And ultimately it’s about (and for) the people with the means to live above the fray.
The damage we’ve done and are doing to Mother Earth is the basis of regional conflicts that transcend nation-states and threaten civilization in a larger sense, and I believe much of the “otherizing” in the world is connected to the ability for a small group of people to have access to a diminishing pool of resources.
Bottom line: It’s all connected. Social/economic/political freedom vs. privilege. Which is why supporting a drag show and an array of reading choices in schools/libraries is everybody’s business.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com