CV NEWS FEED // A Catholic author and political advocate recently detailed what he witnessed at a drag show that took place in his local school district, describing the “groomer show” as “nothing but politics and a stick in your eye.”
Crisis Magazine published contributor Austin Ruse’s “What We Saw at the Groomer Show” on May 31. Ruse is the president of the Center for Family and Human Rights and a longtime advocate of marriage, family, and the unborn.
In his article, Ruse explained that a public high school in Fairfax County, Virginia, recently hosted a group of drag performers at a “drag brunch” fundraiser.
The “drag brunch” came around the same time that the school put on a student performance of Broadway’s pro-drag musical “Kinky Boots.”
“Only in Fairfax County would school administrators believe this play would be appropriate for students to perform. The school’s own advertising for the play warned of mature content,” Ruse wrote, continuing, “It should be noted that the chairman of the Fairfax School board is a loud and proud LGBTQ+ activist who took his oath of office on a gay porn book for kids.”
The “drag brunch,” which Ruse and his wife went to, was not well attended, and people in the audience “were mostly older shlumpy lefties, angry neighbor ladies, YouTube Karen-types,” he wrote. Some young children and students were also present.
One of the men who performed at the drag show, using the stage name “Dixie Crystal,” spoke about his upbringing before the show started.
“Dixie Crystal was the main guy, who called himself the ‘Drag Mother’ to the two other goofballs,” Ruse wrote. “He says he was raised by a ‘Drag Mother’ who groomed him, errrrrrr, raised him because his mean mom and dad kicked him out.”
During the drag show itself, the three men wearing drag costumes repeatedly twirled, posed, stomped, and “lip-synched,” Ruse wrote.
“Oh, did this audience love the three remarkably untalented men who pranced around on stage,” he wrote. “The audience shrieked and cheered. It was as if they knew these guys were really rather pathetic, and they were cheering for what they saw as a stick in the eye to middle-class morality.”
Ruse noted that his wife organized a protest of around 40 people, who were outside of the school during the “drag brunch.” The protestors were met with several middle-finger responses from public schoolers in the parking lot and angry honks from cars driving by.
Several people also came inside and put blessed salt on the ground of the auditorium where the drag performance was going to take place. A woman named Vanessa Hall wrote of the show afterward, and, according to Ruse, she claimed that the blessed salt “could have been anthrax and that what [the protestors] did was nothing less than a bomb scare.”
According to Ruse, Hall also wrote of the show, “I was challenged, informed, and entertained, which is why art is necessary in this world, because it challenges your assumptions, prejudices and senses.”
Continuing in his article, Ruse wrote, “The fact is, nothing that day challenged Vanessa’s assumptions, prejudices, and senses. Her assumptions, prejudices, and senses were an open door that the groomers gleefully pushed open.”
Last month, Ruse’s wife, Cathy, told CatholicVote about a demonstration she organized in opposition to the “drag” event.
Readers can find CatholicVote’s exclusive interview with Cathy Ruse here.
