About That Opening Ceremony...

If you happened to miss the sex clown parade at the Olympics Opening Ceremony in Paris this past weekend, congratulations! It was cringe.

And unless you’ve been living under a rock, odds are pretty high you’ve heard some pretty emotional responses to the ordeal. No one was particularly shocked by queer artistic director Thomas Jolly’s choice to feature LGBT themes in his vision. He basically promised to do just that, expressing a strong desire to make sure everyone felt “represented” in his work.

I think we mostly expected a few gender bendy hat tips or fashion choices, not a full blown drag show or an entire 30 second segment dedicated to the steamy storyline of a pansexual threesome, I mean, I get that “menage a trois” is a French thing, but so are croissants and escargot, and no one felt the need to squish those into the program just to check the cliche box.

We didn’t necessarily expect to see Piche, the bearded drag queen, crawling around on all fours, nor did we anticipate a near-naked guy to be rolling around the stage in blue body paint singing about his junk. I don’t speak French, so I personally missed that part, but The Washington Post interpreted his lyrics for us: “Where to hide a revolver when you’re completely naked?” he sang, pointing down to his groin. “I know where you’re thinking. But that’s not a good idea.” He continued, “No more rich and poor when you go back to being naked.”

Remember, a lot of us watch the Olympics with our kids.

Perhaps the most contentious element of the night was the “fashion show” portion of the evening, prominently featuring a handful of participants from RuPaul’s “Drag Race” as they sashayed down a runway in a visually evocative tableau that left many viewers, myself include, wondering if the scene was meant to parody Leonardo da Vinci’s famous “Last Supper” painting. There are obvious visual similarities between the two, so it’s not unreasonable for people to ask.

The tableau invoked historically sacred iconography, placing a halo over the head of the central divinity figure, a DJ and producer who’s made a name for herself in the drag world, where she’s known simply as “Barbara Butch.” In a now deleted social media post, Barbara posted the image with the caption, “Oh yes! The New Gay Testament!” Holy sacrilege, Batman.

So whether or not the similarities were intentional, it seems some of the characters were happy to participate in the mockery. What does it communicate when you replace Christ with a scantily clad fat woman or make the disciples transvestites? And why in heaven’s name did they have to include a child in the scene? Drag is inherently sexual, and sex is not for kids. But in today’s economy, you’re either a bigot or a Victorian era prude for saying so.

So what’s the appropriate response? It’s one thing to watch the unbelieving world behave like unbelievers. It’s another thing entirely to watch them them take the sacred and replace it with complete debauchery. If Jesus were in attendance, would he flip over a few tables, or would He turn the other cheek? What does discernment look like here?

Now to be completely fair, I am not personally convinced that director Thomas Jolly actually intended for his scene to function as a parody of “The Last Supper.” He expressly denies that claim, and it’s quite possible he’s telling the truth. He says the scene, which he calls, “Festivity,” was actually meant to portray the feasting of Dionysus, the Greek god of celebration, which actually makes a lot of sense as a hat tip to the original Olympics in Greece.

And I do think a lot of Christians, myself included, may have jumped the gun when we rushed to assume the worst about his motivations. Hear me now: I am NOT saying his artistic choices were at all appropriate for the event, and I think there are a litany of legitimate reasons for people both inside and outside the faith to push back against them, but I don’t think any of us have the right to conclusively assert that this was an intentional targeted attack on Christianity, so I do think we need to be careful about playing the persecution card prematurely or calling for boycotts on the grounds of religious discrimination.

I’ve seen a lot of finger wagging on both sides of this debate. Michael Knowles went so far as to say that any company that doesn’t pull its advertising from the Olympics is advertising its hatred for Christianity. I think this is a bit histrionic. On the flip side, there are also a ton of people telling Christians we aren’t ever allowed to draw boundaries on disrespect and that we should just be quiet and feed the hungry and wash feet and worry about things that actually matter. And this is a bit on the gaslighty side for me. It reminds me of how patriarchalists tell battered women to just go home and pray for their husbands and collect holiness points that will accrue jewels for their heavenly crowns. “Just stay sweet” is often a form of enabling sin, and I reject it entirely.

Now there is some truth to the rebuke that insists we Christians seem to care a whole lot more about condemning LGBT sexual sin than we do about addressing sexual sins of other varieties in our own ranks. Is a drag performance any more wicked than, let’s say, a presidential candidate who cheats on his newly postpartum wife with a Playboy model or his pregnant wife with a porn star? Are we in the habit of giving out free passes for sexual misconduct and cover-ups when it suits our interests? These are questions worth prayerfully asking, and if the Spirit convicts, we should adjust our standards accordingly.

But I reject doormat Christianity. It’s feckless and virtue signally, and maybe if Christians would have enough of a spine to stand up and boldly name the sins that are actively hurting people (both inside and outside our camp), we would end up with fewer wounds to bind in the first place. There’s a time and a place for Christians to say, “Okay now, that’s enough” and invite people to behave better. We shouldn’t play the victim when we do this. It’s not ultimately about our hurt feelings; it’s about naming harmful behaviors and collectively raising our standards for human behavior. There’s nothing dignified about bearded drag queens crawling around on the floor in degrading caricatures of womanhood. We shouldn’t be asking for anyone’s permission to say so.

Do I think an Olympics boycott is a good idea? For a number of reasons, no. For one thing, if you choose to refrain from watching the Olympics without telling anyone at the top of the totem pole why you’re refraining, the only one who’s going to miss out on anything is you. They’ve already conducted a bunch of polls about declining viewership, so if you’re among the people who refrains from watching, you’re likely going to get lumped into the mix of people who are disinterested for other reasons, and your outrage will have accomplished nothing.

Another point worth considering here is that, unlike Target or Starbucks, for example, the IOC is a non-profit organization, and high percentages of their revenue go directly to helping create opportunities for athletes, so if you hit them in the pocketbook, the people who are going to feel the brunt of this most are athletes, who had nothing at all to do with the stupid artistic choices that pissed you off in the first place.

There are a number of remarkable human interest stories worth celebrating in the Olympics. There are women who fled the Taliban and risked their lives to defy their ban on women in sports. There are 37 athletes on the official IOC Refugee team, people who’ve fled persecution in their home countries and survived to compete on a global stage to communicate their resilience in the face of great struggle. The athletes are worth celebrating. It’s the artistic direction of an isolated chapter that needs our attention.

I personally think the best way to effect change here is to contact the IOC directly and share your grievances with them. Tell them you watch the Olympics because you want to unite around all that is good about humanity— perseverance, grit, determination, courage— not around public fetish that’s inappropriate for kids. And I do think the people in charge are already more than aware of the public disapproval. They’re at least aware enough to have already issued a half-assed “apology” for the unrest. It will be interesting to see how they leverage this feedback at the next Olympic Games.

As usual, I find myself in this weird and largely unoccupied space in the middle of the extremes. Don’t be a doormat who says nothing or a victim who centers your hurt feelings as the actual problem in play. Remind the powers-that-be that we watch the Olympics to celebrate human dignity, not debauchery. And make sure you’re consistent in your outrage. Sexual perversion destroys people wherever it exists and whether or not it’s dressed in drag.

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