Drag queens and trans women vs christians

I recently visited with a dear, long-lost friend who happens to be christian.

As we exchanged life-updates since we'd last seen each other, I mentioned how my best friend, who's a transgender woman, is doing.

And I mentioned how the election is affecting her, given that there are already states that forbid her to appear as herself in public under recent "drag" laws.

My visitor somehow does not think that drag laws affect trans people. That's all well and good for her, but I sure af wouldn't want to be a trans person trying to travel through one of these states and getting hauled off to jail for dressing as myself.

My visitor, like a maga friend of mine, tried to make a distinction between transgender women and "men wearing dresses" so they can play women's sports and go into women's restrooms to attack women. Frankly, that sounds to me like a BS line that evangelicals and fox propaganda made up to attack transgender women while pretending not to be judgmental. Like, how tf is anyone supposed to know the difference between a transgender woman and a "man wearing a dress"? Better just be suspicious of everyone! (Side note: a very sweet young person with a full beard and quite a lot of body hair showed up at my weekly dance some months ago wearing a very cute strappy sundress. They were an adorable human, and even though they were hirsute, they looked adorable. Even if the combination of lush, dark body hair and delicate strappy dress was somewhat amusing to my trans lady friend and me, we thought it was great that they were there, dancing, grinning, and happy in their own skin. They came a few times, but we haven't seen them in a while--maybe the cooler weather is too chilly for those cute frilly floral dresses. Personally, I love how our weekly dance gives everyone a safe space to dress as outrageously as they want to--from hoop skirts to pirate and medieval garb to corsets to cis-hetero men wearing skirts and hairy people wearing strappy little short dresses to animal faces and ears to you name it. It's just the best!)

My visitor then went on a rant about how children should not attend drag shows.

Had this visitor ever attended a drag show? No.

Hm.

I said I'd never attended a drag show, but I want to; and it's on the parents if they want to bring their kids to a drag show or let them attend drag queen storytime. It's not the responsibility of the performers!

For example, I told my visitor, my parents took us kids to Mel Brooks and other PG movies when we were both well under 10 years old. Frankly, I appreciated being trusted to be mature enough not to abuse the privilege, but when my older sibling started cussing like Earnest Borgnine in The Poseidon Adventure, our parents stopped taking us.

Our parents were never harmed or confused by Uncle Miltie dressing in drag any more than we kids were harmed or confused by Bugs Bunny or Monty Python characters dressing in drag.

Frankly, I've never seen any significant, verifiable reporting that, as a class, drag queens or drag kings or transgender people cause damage or harm to anyone, let alone children.

Conversely, I have seen a lot of significant, verifiable reporting that christians, as a class, cause damage and harm to everyone, especially children.

Who would you feel safer being alone with or leaving your child alone with: a priest? Or a transgender person? Or a drag queen reading stories?

I grew up catholic, thanks, so I'll take the drag and transgender people every time.