By DEXTER DUGGAN
A San Francisco native who provided nursing care to people suffering from their homosexual lifestyles there expressed regret that the University of San Diego (USD), a Catholic school, continues to promote sexual “confusion” with an annual spring drag show on campus.
“I was really sad the administration gave students a forum to act out craziness,” Jeannie Stiles, RN, told The Wanderer in an April 15 telephone interview. “This was like new confusion” added to their lives when they’re “still trying to figure things out” as young people about their identity as “children of God.”
Stiles spoke about suffering and death she saw in San Francisco that resulted from allowing gender confusion into people’s lives.
The previous evening, April 14, USD staged its annual “Celebration of Gender Expression: Supreme Drag Superstar V” for more than 600 people packing Shiley Theatre on campus. This official promotion of sexual disorientation began in 2012.
Three successive bishops of the Catholic Diocese of San Diego in that time span took a passive approach to this affront to Church teaching — long-serving Robert Brom, who took normal retirement in September 2013; his coadjutor-successor, Cirilo Flores, who soon died of cancer, in September 2014, and Robert McElroy, who assumed formal control as new bishop on April 15, 2015, one day before last year’s drag show.
McElroy previously was an auxiliary bishop in, coincidentally, the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Two years ago, well-known southern California drag queen Tootie Keanuenue Nefertootie was among the gender-confusing acts at the show, performing in satanic garb — a black robe with high collar and a goat-horn headdress.
San Diego-area opponents of the show hoped that the retirement of veteran USD president Mary Lyons, Ph.D., last year would mean the end of the show after Lyons’ successor, James T. Harris III, took over. However, “Supreme Drag Superstar” endures.
But one opponent of the presentation, who asked not to be named, told The Wanderer that the 2016 show wasn’t as bad as it might have been. “It’s not the cutting edge any more that they wanted it to be,” he said, describing it as “toned down,” even though it’s still “horrible that they have it.”
Lyons never sat down with opponents of the show, he said, but Harris has been open to hearing their concerns.
Southern California attorney Charles LiMandri, a USD alumnus and traditional-values activist, was quoted by the Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Education Daily on April 13:
“I do not doubt (Harris’) desire to try to bring USD back in line with the vision of its founders as a value-oriented Catholic university. Unfortunately, he is up against formidable opposition from a cadre of tenured faculty on campus. They are determined to continue to push a secular agenda that is directly opposed to authentic Catholic values and beliefs.”
The story added that LiMandri said Harris “will need the support of the faithful alumni, and especially the board of trustees, to effect any positive and lasting change at USD.”
The foe of the show who didn’t want to be named provided The Wanderer with a copy of a statement received before the show from Peter Marlow, USD’s associate vice president for university communications. It said:
“President Harris joined USD in August. He met with community members, alumni, students, and has been in contact with the San Diego Diocese regarding this annual student event. Following this counsel, and after careful consideration, President Harris is allowing this student-sponsored event to take place, which will be supervised by administrative personnel to ensure that the same ‘PG-13’ standards and protocols are applied to this event that are applied to all other sanctioned student activities at USD.
“We understand the disappointment by some in this decision and regret that this particular event contributes to unfavorable perceptions of USD’s Catholic identity by some organizations,” the statement continued.
“Yet, USD’s Catholic identity is evidenced every day on the campus through spiritual, academic, social, and developmental opportunities for students within the context of Catholic social thought and the rich Catholic intellectual tradition. This includes daily Mass, daily Confession, and weekly exposition and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.”
Nurse Stiles, the mother of a USD student, attended the presentation this year. “I just heard it was promoting the homosexual lifestyle,” she said.
As a fourth-generation San Franciscan, “I’ve really been around the beginning of the AIDS movement as a registered nurse,” Stiles said. “. . . I’ve been around in the jails. I’ve been in the emergency rooms. . . .
“I dealt with people who had sex-change operations,” she continued. “I asked if life was better afterward. The answer was no, N-O. . . .
“A lot of the men told me their stories,” Stiles said, including “men who had to wear diapers” because of damage to their bodies caused by unnatural sexual practices.
This year’s drag show was emceed by “Bob the Drag Queen,” reportedly brought in from New York, and also included a male USD professor dressed as a woman.
“I thought the professor, in my opinion — this was an abuse of power,” Stiles said, referring to his position of educational authority while presenting himself in a “tight, slinky dress, with lots of lipstick.”
Stiles considered this “a real put-down of women” in the audience, portraying them as people who are just “slinky and sexy.”
A man in the audience told The Wanderer there were six dance-and-music routines put on by students, with males and females dressed as their opposite sex. Bob the Drag Queen was “big, muscly, dressed as a woman. . . . He was very comical.”
Tickets were free but were limited to two per student, the man said. Before the performance, he said, about 10 “concerned Catholics” prayed the rosary in reparation in front of the campus theater.
The cover page of the printed program showed part of the face of a bearded young man wearing lipstick. The titles of the routines included, “Iciest Queen You’ll Ever Meet” and “Ill-Fitting Bras.”
Rejection of traditional gender roles can have dire consequences, Stiles said. “There were times when I felt nauseous watching this (program). . . . They don’t know what the end of this could be,” including violent death.
She saw dead men in the emergency room, “killed because they were queens.
“There’s natural law. God gave us laws for a reason,” Stiles continued, but the message of the cross-dressing professor at the drag show, she said, was, “do as you please. . . . Sexuality is to be shared. Sex is for everyone, no exceptions. Accept the values of a queen. . . .
“They don’t understand it’s a dead-end lifestyle. . . . It’s not to be taken lightly,” Stiles added.
“It seems it’s not the university’s role to push them over the cliff. . . . To live as a drag king is not a hopeful lifestyle. . . . I’m disappointed,” she said. “. . . I’ve seen suicide and I’ve seen men beat up because they were posing as women. . . . I’ve seen them come into the emergency room dead.”
Stiles said she also encountered men in San Francisco taking hormones so they’d develop breasts.
“I’ve been around wonderful, peaceful deaths” in her work in home care and intensive care, she said, but none of these were AIDS deaths. The worst death she ever saw, she said, was of a young man in his late 20s with AIDS.
The printed program for this drag show included sexual-identity definitions, as if perhaps people hadn’t been aware of them. One example:
“Transsexual — Person whose assigned biological sex doesn’t match their internal gender identity. Often transsexual people alter or wish to alter their bodies through hormones or surgery in order to match their gender identity. Commonly used terms are Female to Male (FTM); Male to Female (MTF).”
The Wanderer asked San Diego diocesan chancellor Rodrigo Valdivia by email “what action, expression of views, or whatever else the diocese did concerning this” year’s drag show.
Valdivia replied: “Thanks for reaching out to me in this regard. The Diocese of San Diego did not have any involvement with the University of San Diego regarding this event.”
This newspaper followed up by citing the USD statement that the university president “has been in contact with the San Diego Diocese regarding this annual student event.” The Wanderer asked Valdivia if the university’s statement was inaccurate.
“I cannot confirm the accuracy of the statement. I can verify that diocesan officials were not involved in any discussions regarding the planning and preparation of the event,” Valdivia replied.
Gender Ideology
Charles LiMandri, the attorney and USD alumnus, also is founder of Alumni for a Catholic USD (alumniforacatholicusd.org) and president of the traditionalist Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund.
He and another activist had taken the case of the drag show to the Vatican, then received a private letter in December 2013 from the Congregation for Catholic Education saying 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.”
In an email to The Wanderer on the same day as the latest drag show, LiMandri said:
“It is unfortunate that USD has repeatedly ignored the Vatican’s Congregation for Education, which called its drag queen contest a ‘scandal’ that should be discontinued. This sell-out to the secularists pushing an anti-Catholic agenda at USD is a betrayal to the many thousands of parents and loyal alums that have long supported USD with their time, talent, and treasure. As long as USD persists in defying Church teaching, it should not continue to falsely advertise itself as a ‘Catholic’ university.
“There is absolutely no way that the USD drag contest can be reconciled with the magisterial teachings of the Catholic Church. Moreover, this scandalous event flies directly in the face of the repeated statements of Pope Francis on the subject of ‘gender ideology,’ which he has called ‘demonic’,” LiMandri said.
“Anyone who thinks otherwise should refer to the irrefutable resources on the ‘Church Teaching’ section of the website www.AlumniForACatholicUSD.org.”
Stiles, now a former San Franciscan, told The Wanderer: “I watched our city be hijacked by the weirdos that came from all over the U.S. . . . I had to get out of there. . . . I didn’t realize how bad it was until we moved down here,” to the San Diego area, which she said is a welcome change.
Catholic education isn’t doing enough to evangelize and to show students that peace “is in the arms of our Lord and Blessed Lady,” Stiles said.
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