Notre Dame Sponsors Drag Show For ‘Academic Freedom’

In just a few days, the Catholic university, Notre Dame, will host a drag show. The show is supposedly accepted as a move of “academic freedom” and will conclude the half-a-semester course on all things Drag. 

The “Irish Rover,” the school’s newspaper, broke the story a few weeks ago and on Sunday, and The American Spectator added it to the outlet’s “Education Gone Wild” column. 

The event is open to any students, staff or faculty at Notre Dame and is sponsored by the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts Henkels Award, the department of music, the gender studies program, the Initiative on Race and Resilience, and the department of American Studies at the school. It is sorta the grand finale to professor Pamela Wojcik’s class called “Drag on Screen: Variations and Meanings” that is a one credit course running from September 12 – October 31. 

The “Irish Rover’s” editor-in-chief Nico Schmitz, penned a piece titled “No Place for Drag at Our Lady’s University.” In it he wrote, “In supporting lies about the human person — lies that say men can be women and that a minstrel show of femininity is a legitimate art form — the university is not only actively working against her mission, but permitting irreparable damage to its community and image.”

The event plans to feature overly sexual performers including one from RuPaul’s drag Race who regularly posts almost completely nude photos, links to his OnlyFans and calls himself things like a “f*ggot.”

He seems like a great influence for up and coming college graduates. 

Well this is actually happening, apparently https://t.co/3pRilRdegv pic.twitter.com/kjiHVdM9tm

— W. Joseph DeReuil (@wjdereuil) October 7, 2023

In the same piece by Schmitz by the “Irish Rover”, Schmitz condemned the event insisting that this sort of sexualization is against the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here’s what he said: 

There is nothing confusing about the Church’s stance on issues of sexuality. The Catechism additionally describes that “Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. … For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.” 

Drag shows, even when not performed for children, dishonor and violate this natural order. They skew the line between genders and celebrate the chaos and confusion of gender dysphoria under the guise of “self-expression.” Fundamentally, a drag show mocks all that it means to be a woman by painting a hyper-sexualized picture and making her an object of derision.

Father John Jenkins is the president of Notre Dame is the one allowing this event to take place. Though he previously vetoed the drama team’s performance of “The Vagina Monologues” and a queer film festival, Fr. Jenkins eventually caved after backlash from LGBTQ students on the campus and allowed the performance and event to take place. Now he’s yet again allowing this sort of anti-Catholic rhetoric to flourish. 

“We defend this freedom even when the content of the presentation is objectionable to some or even many. The event you reference is part of a one-credit course in Film, Television and Theater on the history of drag, and the principle of academic freedom applies,” Fr. Jenkins said in a statement insisting that the event falls under “academic freedom” and “freedom of expression.”

But now, some students are pushing back. One senior, Madelyn Stout, called it an attack on the dignity of women. “Regardless of one’s stance on political or cultural issues, I regard this decision as an affront to the sanctity and dignity of the feminine form of Our Lady, the Mother of God and the patroness of our university,” Stout told The American Spectator.

Administrators are allowing it to pass under the guise of “academic freedom.” Another senior, in collaboration with Stout said the following about that decision: Three male artists are being paid to parade around in provocative women’s clothing under the guise of self-expression and bodily autonomy. If this is academic freedom, then the phrase is meaningless.”

You can say that again girls! “Freedom cannot be divorced from truth; the two are bound up together,” “The American Spectator” noted which couldn’t be closer to accurate. Men parading around, mocking women is not only unnecessary and disturbing but a disgrace to real women, to what Notre Dame claims to root itself in and what Christ teaches. 

This is just another example of a school bowing to the woke mob and choosing progressivism and the leftist agenda over actual academics and morals.