Brooks: Catholic church flashes anti-drag queen message, hastily backpedals

Virtue signaling is out in Donald Trump’s America.

Now, those who are so inclined can just write the first mean-spirited thing that pops into their head and put it up in flashing lights for all of Oakdale, Minn., to see.

A sign glowed outside Transfiguration Catholic Church and School last week: Drag Queen-Free Since 1953! The school educates children from preschool through eighth grade. This was Friday’s lesson.

On Monday, the church put out a tepid apology for the message.

Or, as they put it in their Facebook post, “[making] reference to a specific demographic of people in a way that fails to adequately account for the Catholic Church’s teachings on the dignity of the human person.”

“Upon learning of this message, leadership removed it immediately and regrets the controversy that this has caused as it distracts from the parish’s mission to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” the statement added.

Transfiguration’s pastor, the Rev. Nathan Meyers, declined to comment beyond the church’s Facebook statement.

“We firmly hold that all people are made in the image of God and this innate dignity is to be respected at all times,” the church’s post continued, “even when serious disagreements emerge.”

Freaking out over drag queen story hour and medical care for trans kids wasn’t a thing until conservative activists made it a thing to fill the void left after America stopped freaking out over gay marriage. The GOP poured millions of dollars into anti-trans advertising during the 2024 campaign. One analysis by PBS Newshour found that 40% percent of the ads coming out of the Trump campaign during one two-week stretch in October were anti-trans ads.

If you were lucky, your old high school yearbook had only happy kids in drag – not kids in blackface.

“Serious disagreements” over drag amounts to a political construct. Nobody was freaking out over drag in the 1950s. High school yearbooks were full of boys in dresses at school spirit events.

Jack Lemmon was in a dress. Tony Curtis was in a dress. Milton Berle was in a dress. Cary Grant was in a dress. Bob Hope was in a dress. The federal income tax on the rich — the people earning more than $400,000 a year — was as high as 84%.

All those people pining to go back to the 1950s might not like what they find when they get there.