Introduction
Last weekend saw some of the worst and some of the best of Notre Dame. The worst: The Film, Television and Theater Department Drag Show. The best: The DeNicolo Center for Ethics and Culture annual Conference.
Sycamore Trust’s president Dr. Steven O’Neil and board member Katherine Kersten, who were at Notre Dame for the weekend events, will report on the Conference and the student-led protest of the drag show in a subsequent bulletin. Here, we supplement our previous discussion of the drag show.
The most notable development was the indictment of the drag show by Notre Dame’s bishop, The Most Rev. Kevin C. Rhoades. But first, the event itself.
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The Show
The drag show took place the evening of November 3 before a friendly audience of around 120 students and faculty. Student opposition prompted the sponsoring Film, Television and Theatre Department to cancel the open sale of tickets and to limit attendance to “pre-allocated” ticket holders. That cut out the Irish Rover reporter, so we have only this from The Observer:
The drag artist Blair St. Clair took stage….A Notre Dame student with the stage name Cordelia and London BaCall opened for St. Clair. All three drag queens performed two acts, dancing and lip-syncing in costume to Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and others. The crowd of mostly students and faculty offered each of the performers standing ovations.
Again, a Notre Dame student “drag queen” was featured and received a “standing ovation” from a Notre Dame audience!
As to the other two performers, we repeat what we and The Irish Rover said earlier:
Blaire St. Claire (aka Andrew Alan Bryson) has consistently tweeted photos in which he is almost completely nude. He (sometimes “she”) was Miss Gay Indiana in 2016 and “is a total stud now and fans are ravenous” (Out magazine with “sexy pictures”). And he “is a Twunk now and everyone’s thirsty” (Pride magazine}.
(We understand a “twunk” is a “muscular twink.” Who knew?)
Finally, London BaCall is a former Miss Gay Harrisonburg. By all means check him out on Instagram to see him perform.
And for a Blair St. Clair “steamy music video,” visit him on his YouTube channel and for more on London BaCall, including his customary venues, find him on Instagram.
The Pre-Show "Symposium"
The one-credit class that provided organizers with the “academic-freedom” pretext to hold the drag show on campus also included a “symposium on drag” prior to the show. According to an X-post, Sebastían Ramíez, a third year Notre Dame Law School student, the symposium was on the “unconstitutional drag bans in the country and the art of drag!” It featured (pictured below) “Lúc Ami Father of the House of Limpwrists The Alien Deity of Chicago” a “Visionary, Deity, Thembo✨Alien Deity in a human world✨ they/m in drag” — along with Bambi Banks-Coulee, who claims to be “God’s Favorite Drag Queen,” and Melissa Stewart, a Civil Rights Lawyer from Memphis, Tennessee.
The Protest
As we’ve reported, a group of women students implored the administration not to allow “drag artists to come to Notre Dame, dress as women, defile femininity, and most importantly, promote the disordered ideology that gender and sexuality are fluid – in direct contradiction of Church teaching.”
With male student supporters, they organized an email protest to Father Jenkins and the chairs of the sponsoring departments, and during the drag show.
over 250 students, faculty, and community members gathered outside of the Debartolo Performing Arts Center to host a prayer rally and rosary procession to the log chapel where a holy hour was held throughout the time the event took place. Local media (ABC57, WNDU) covered the protest as well as The Observer, NDTV, and TFP.
Sycamore Trust urged its subscribers to support the students’ email campaign and prayerful protest, and many did. Members of our 1100 person Prayer Apostolate prayed the Rosary at home with the students on campus; of the 1,264 messages sent via the student web site, 493 were from alumni and an indeterminate number from other Sycamore supporters; and many other Sycamore ND alumni, family and friends wrote Father Jenkins directly.
As we said, we’ll describe these events in more detail in a subsequent report.
Note: To view photos of the protest by Bridgette Rodgers, ND 2026, visit our photo gallery at https://adobe.ly/3QKuNjX
Father Jenkins’s response
Many who wrote Father Jenkins received the university’s rote non-committal acknowledgement, but some received this message on his behalf:
As Fr. Jenkins said in a recent statement, “because Notre Dame is a university committed to the pursuit of truth through teaching, learning, inquiry, and dialogue, we are committed fully to the academic freedom of scholars to research and publish the results of their research and to teach in accord with their obligations and training.” 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 Theatre on the history of drag, and the principle of academic freedom applies.
The “because it’s part of a course” rationale is risible. It would protect a strip tease performance as part of a course on pornography.
And relating this drag show to “the pursuit of truth” is bizarre. Drag shows serve falsehood, not truth, by undermining the Church’s teaching on sex and gender.
“Drag shows present a protest against commonly held beliefs about the natural, binary nature of gender and sexuality systems.” They are “premised on the belief in gender fluidity” and are “intended to make this fluidity visible through performance.” Moreover, “The authenticity of femininity is always undermined by a drag queen’s roughness, which often includes a vulgar stage presence and desire to shock.”
Bishop Rhoades’s denunciation
The iniquity of the drag show was underscored by Notre Dame’s bishop, the Most Rev. Kevin C. Rhoades, during the Ethics and Culture Conference Mass the evening of the show.
The bishop had, we understand, sent a message of encouragement to the student protest leaders several days earlier. Then, at the conclusion of the Mass, he deplored the “evil” taking place that evening on campus. According to witnesses, he said:
We had a beautiful liturgy, a very holy Mass, but there is something very unholy happening on this campus tonight.
He thereupon led he congregation in a Hail Mary for “the change of heart” of those supporting the drag show.
Drag at Notre Dame – The Future
In introducing the drag show, Professor Pamela Wojcik, the drag course instructor, exhorted the audience:
If you want more drag shows on campus, by all means, make that noise. Talk to the administration. I’m not going to organize it, but you could. And that would be fabulous, and I think Legends should have drag night and it would be super, super fun.
A rainbow-festooned student counter-demonstration testifies to the likelihood that LGBTQ forces will “make that noise,” since drag shows “function as tactical repertoires of the gay and lesbian movement” (Taylor, Rupp and Gamson, Performing Protest, 2004).
As a student research paper featured by Notre Dame’s University Writing Program put it:
The queens take to heart the role of advocates for the LGBTQ community. . . . The ultimate intention of the queens is to revolutionize the dichotomous gender perception and propel the LGBTQ movement forward.
It is unsurprising, then, that drag shows are ubiquitous on DEI-drenched secular campuses and at many Catholic schools as well, including Georgetown, Boston, Santa Clara, Fordham, Loyola Marymount, Gonzaga, Marquette, and San Diego.
The backlash, the Bishop’s criticism, and the unfavorable publicity (see below) may deter drag show advocates for a time, and requiring a link to an academic course is at the moment an obstacle.
But a robust LGBTQ movement together with an administration with an uncertain commitment to Church teaching counsel vigilance. As we have reported, Vice President Father Gerry Olinger, the first to approve the drag show, endorsed gender theory while instructing first year students; and Father Jenkins declined to respond to Bill Dempsey’s question “whether Father Gerry Olinger expressed university policy.”
Notre Dame’s public image
The storm of publicity about this episode has dealt another hit to Notre Dame’s reputation as a Catholic university. A simple Google search reveals a barrage of headlines that underscore the controversy, including Students protest drag show planned for Catholic university (Fox News), Notre Dame students defend “dignity and sanctity of women” ahead of campus drag show (Catholic News Agency) and Notre Dame President Fr. John Jenkins Defends “Drag” Event (Catholic Vote).
More, Bishop Rhoades’s admonition was delivered in a packed Sacred Heart Basilica to an Ethics and Culture congregation that included many influential Catholics from academe, media, and public affairs.
Conclusion
We close with the melancholy observation that this episode bookends Father Jenkins’s tenure with episcopal censures of meretricious stage performance at the beginning, with The Vagina Monologues and the late Bishop John M. D’Arcy, and now near the end with Bishop Rhoades and this singularly tacky show business rubble.
Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
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Oremus
Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. (1 Cor 3:18-19)
O God our Father, Eternal Wisdom and Love, You have created us in Your own image and likeness, and called us to live in humble obedience to You and according to the order which You have established to govern the universe. You sent Your Son, Wisdom Incarnate, to save us from sin and to reconcile us to You and to one another. He established the Church to be a saving witness of Wisdom and Love, Goodness and Truth to a rebellious world. We implore You to dispel the darkness that surrounds us. May all who have rejected the truths of creation, seeking to replace Your design for the human race with one of their own, be awakened to the destructive folly which passes for wisdom in this age. Enlighten us all by the Truth which sets us free and grant that we may courageously embrace the scorn and contempt of the wise of the world so that we may joyfully share in the Wisdom of God. Through the intercession of Notre Dame, our Mother, we make our prayer in the Name of Jesus, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.
The above prayer is by Sycamore Trustee Father John Raphael (’89). To join us in regular prayer projects such as our Novena for Catholic Education and our Meditation on the 12-Days of Christmas, please join our Apostolate.
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Father John J. Raphael (’89) offers a monthly Mass for the intentions of our Sycamore Trust community. If you have an intention that you would like him to include at his next Mass, you may submit it by clicking on the following button.
