By DEXTER DUGGAN
Courtesy seemed to be lacking when the University of San Diego, a Catholic school, staged its fourth annual “drag show” celebrating “gender expression” the very day after Bishop Robert McElroy was installed as the new head of the Diocese of San Diego.
At the least, university leadership could have spared McElroy the embarrassment of having this hot potato thrust onto his plate with the raunchy performance on April 16, during the Easter season, one day after he took formal control of the diocese on April 15.
Or, leading up to the drag show’s scheduled date, McElroy could have taken the initiative to pass the word to university administrators that as the incoming head of the diocese, he’d consider it a definite favor from them, if not a downright duty on their part, to spare him this defiant homosexual advocacy on the Catholic campus scheduled right after his installation.
In the unlikely event that McElroy, previously an auxiliary bishop in San Francisco, was unaware that the fourth annual event was on the calendar, San Diego diocesan officials surely would have made him aware.
However, during the previous three drag shows in the spring, beginning in 2012, the San Diego Diocese avoided taking any public position against the scandalous performances.
They occurred during the tenure of longtime Bishop Robert Brom, who took normal retirement in September 2013, and his coadjutor who quickly succeeded Brom, Bishop Cirilo Flores, who served just under a year before dying of cancer in September 2014.
McElroy came down to San Diego from northern California with a reputation of being a “gay friendly” liberal prelate already. It would have seemed a necessary courtesy for the university to have avoided reinforcing this image with its drag show right on campus. But the show went on.
After McElroy was announced on March 3 to become the new San Diego bishop, The Wanderer quoted veteran San Francisco conservative commentator Barbara Simpson, a Catholic, saying:
“McElroy is a known leader of the social-justice wing of the Catholic Church. He fit in very well in liberal San Francisco, especially his views on homosexuality, which have been described as ‘friendly and compromising,’ and ‘elastic’.”
That story, in the March 12 Wanderer, also noted that the widely read Whispers in the Loggia blog said McElroy was “known as one of the Stateside bench’s most outspoken progressives.”
The USD website says, “As a nationally ranked Catholic university, the University of San Diego is dedicated to preparing ethical and compassionate leaders inspired to create lasting social change in our global society.” The website promoted this year’s April 16 “Celebration of Gender Expression — Supreme Drag Superstar IV.”
However, Southern California Catholic attorney Charles LiMandri told The Wanderer in an April 17 telephone interview that he hopes the situation will improve, in part because veteran university President Mary Lyons, Ph.D., is retiring.
“I’m expecting it to be a big improvement. . . . The Catholicity of USD has not fared well under Mary Lyons,” said LiMandri, an activist and president of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, which is involved in religious-liberty cases (consciencedefense.org).
LiMandri, a USD alumnus, later established “Alumni for a Catholic USD,” which focuses on the drag shows. Its website says it had “over 1.5 million hits from April 4, 2012, to February 28, 2015.”
There’s “a great deal of information about the last three USD drag shows, and the whole sordid subject of ‘gender ideology,’ on the website www.alumniforacatholicusd.org,” he said.
In addition, another site’s online article quoted LiMandri on April 17: “We have the opportunity and a clean slate with a new bishop and a new president. I am hoping and praying that this is the last drag show at USD.”
That article appeared at the Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Education Daily tab (cardinalnewmansociety.org).
A man who attended this year’s drag show, who didn’t want to be identified, told The Wanderer, “It was pretty much the same as other years. . . . It’s raunchy,” with a drag queen who calls himself Tootie Nefertootie acting as emcee for the third time.
The “overall problem” with the show, the spectator said, is “a celebration” of the LGBT movement.
The show “was just awful. It does not belong on a campus,” said the man, who is known to this newspaper. “The message it’s giving to the young people is that the LGBT lifestyle has to be accepted. There’s no clarification” between the Church’s teaching on the dignity of the human person and the need to avoid an immoral lifestyle.
The show lasted two hours, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on April 16, at the university’s Shiley Theatre, which seats 600 people, he said, and was “packed,” with some students sitting in the aisles.
“Many faculty” also attended the presentation, he said, which had its audience “basically cheering, applauding a rock-music concert” atmosphere.
Professional drag queen and emcee Nefertootie is “an avowed homosexual” who has his own website advocating “same-sex marriage,” the spectator said.
Two talks were given during the drag show in which, he said, both a male and a female spoke in favor of their becoming the opposite sex. The spectator gave this account:
A male assistant professor of sociology, dressed as a woman, said he’s homosexual and talked about his life, including as a youngster being attracted to what usually would appeal to a girl.
He “gave a testimony” that “when he came out as a homosexual, he found his identity.”
A transgender female student said she “felt like a boy,” asserting that “it’s not what you are born, but what you want to be” — a stand that “everyone applauded.”
There were no protests outside the drag show, the spectator said, but “I saw three people – there may have been a few more,” praying the rosary.
Neither the spectator nor LiMandri was aware of McElroy or the diocese making any statement about the drag show.
San Diego-area Catholic activist Allyson Smith told The Wanderer in an email on April 19:
“The University of San Diego was founded by the religious of the Society of the Sacred Heart, one of the finest teaching orders of nuns in the Church, which in turn was founded by the great St. Madeleine Sophie Barat. St. Madeleine would undoubtedly roll in her grave to see the depths of depravity to which this school has descended.
“Faithful San Diego Catholics pray that USD will return to being the authentically Catholic educational institution that her founders envisioned and that so many have sacrificed their time, treasure, and talent for,” Smith said.
LiMandri said this year’s show was “in many respects a repeat of the former drag shows. . . . They clearly were promoting the idea that there’s nothing wrong with homosexual behavior, or transgender.”
People talked about their experiences as if these should be acceptable for everyone, although they’re directly contrary to Church teaching, he said.
Other U.S. Catholic universities also have staged drag shows, LiMandri noted.
Also, Catholics long have heard of sexually inappropriate presentations such as plays being promoted at institutions of Catholic higher education, as if traditional Catholicism is an especially inviting target to undermine or reject.
LiMandri said he’s “hopeful” about the new president scheduled to join USD this summer after Lyons’ retirement, James T. Harris III, currently president of Widener University, near Philadelphia.
Although Widener isn’t a Catholic school, LiMandri said, Harris is a convert to Catholicism and taught at a Catholic high school.
Harris said “[h]e’s concerned about maintaining the university’s [USD] Catholic identity,” LiMandri said, adding that “I don’t want to put words in his mouth” about exactly what this means.
When Harris’ new job was announced in February, the online Times of San Diego quoted a USD official: “He is a compassionate, Catholic, servant leader with extensive experience leading a comprehensive, liberal arts-based institution, with a particular commitment to student development and engagement in the community.”
One challenge Harris is likely to face is disapproval of the drag shows as “scandal,” expressed by the Congregation for Catholic Education in late 2013.
LiMandri and another Southern California Catholic activist had gone with evidence to complain in Rome, and later were advised by the congregation that “in view of the gravity of the case, it is worth mentioning that in light of the show and the scandal that it caused, this Congregation intends to act through administrative channels to the competent ecclesiastical authority in San Diego.”
During his recent interview with The Wanderer, LiMandri said, “The case with the Vatican…is still ongoing.”
Despite Pope Francis’ reputation created by news media, LiMandri told The Wanderer that people shouldn’t expect the Pope to take an indulgent view of the drag show.
Whether a Pope is considered liberal or conservative, “when it comes to Church doctrine, they are consistent,” LiMandri said.
He added that if defenders of the drag show were to argue otherwise, “They don’t know what our current Pope has said about the issue, or they’re being disingenuous.”
Donations To USD Sink
Indeed, one day before the latest drag show, Francis coincidentally disputed the “gender theory” of the homosexualist movement.
LifeSiteNews.com reported on April 15: “In his catechesis today, Pope Francis strongly refuted the foundational tenets of ‘gender theory’ that forms the basis of radical feminism as well as the homosexualist political movement.
“The differences between men and women are not a matter of ‘subordination,’ as feminist and gender theory would have it, but of ‘communion and generation,’ he said in his weekly general audience at the Vatican,” LifeSiteNews.com said.
And just after last year’s drag show was staged on April 10, Francis warned about the reality of the Devil and his evil during April 11 daily Mass in Rome.
At the 2014 show, drag queen Nefertootie cavorted in satanic garb while lip-synching lyrics saying, “Evil is everywhere. Good doesn’t have a prayer!”
LiMandri told The Wanderer that he has been approached “many times” by parents inquiring about the situation at USD, and that he was told the school lost $10 million in donations the very first year of the drag show.
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