When a friend from high school is a drag queen, the idea of men dressing up as women and performing shows is normalized pretty quickly. I’ll call my friend, aka The Great Fabu, “Joe” to give him his privacy.

In sixth grade, Joe wrote me a note asking, “Will you go with me? Circle yes or no.” I replied, “while I am circling no, I would like to remain friends.” He used to tease me that my rejection turned him to men. Joe is clever, kind, cute and completely irreverent in the funniest way.

We have a mutual friend, I’ll call him Esteban, because he would request a sexy name. Esteban and I lived together in our twenties. My parents deeply objected to me living with a man, regardless of his sexuality. I explained it was my choice unless they wanted to pay my rent somewhere. Esteban couldn’t even tell his parents.

He told them he was living with my now husband, Dale. When his mom would come by, we would “masculine” up my area of the apartment. He was not out to his parents, and they would have had a very strong reaction to both his being gay and living with a female, so he chose to not rock that boat.

Esteban and I saw the movie, Birdcage together. You might recall, Nathan Lane was a drag queen in it, and he was extremely melodramatic. Everyone laughed during his scenes, except for Esteban and me. We had our own Nathan Lane in our friend, Joe. To put it plainly, we knew it was not safe for Joe to be melodramatic in public.

Homophobia was still an accepted way of being then. Living with Esteban, I heard many comments that shocked me. One person offered to still be my friend, even though I was living with a gay man. Mighty generous, right? There was lots of curiosity about Esteban and whether he had a partner and how I dealt with it. I explained my old roommate had a boyfriend, and she and I got along fine, so I didn’t anticipate any problems with Esteban.

Will and Grace. Ellen DeGeneres and countless other public figures coming out have altered many people’s views about the LGBTQ community. Still, there is much progress to be made.

Last night, a Drag show was scheduled for Southern Pines, NC. We have a home in Pinehurst and were watching a terrible Christmas movie featuring Elizabeth Hurley and Kelsey Grammar. Every fifteen minutes or so, one of us would ask the other, “should we find something else?” And each time, one of us would say, “no” and find the fortitude to soldier on through the inane plotline and bad acting.

About halfway through, everything shut off. There wasn’t a flickering of lights or a storm, heavy rains or any other reasonable possibility for the complete blackness. The Village of Pinehurst doesn’t have streetlights, so there was nothing but darkness.

Immediately I said, “I bet it’s the Proud Boys.”

There have been many news stories about Proud Boys trying to disrupt Drag shows, and there were protesters trying to stop the one in Southern Pines, scheduled for last night. Today, we know the complete loss of electricity was a criminal act.

Somebody or multiple people fired shots at substations, knocking out the power for more than forty-thousand people.
There have been car accidents. I’m sure it has been scary for those on oxygen. I can’t imagine the difficulty for those with babies. To be stuck in a home with teenagers and no WIFI must be the worst fate.

Dale and I just drove back to Raleigh, mostly for the coffee. I could live without most things, as long as I have coffee.

The news about the cause trickles in. If it was intended to stop the Drag show, they were unsuccessful. The headliner of the show asked everyone to shine their cell phone lights on the stage, so they could continue, and continue they did.

I have been an unintentional advocate for the LGBTQ community. I didn’t set out to fight on their behalf. I just really liked Joe and Esteban and didn’t think anyone should be mean to them for being who they are.

Maybe you don’t have a Joe or an Esteban in your life, and maybe you are comfortable sitting in a safe seat, where you don’t have to stand up for anyone in this marginalized community. Maybe you are sitting in the dark in Pinehurst, throwing away all the food that has gone bad in your refrigerator. Maybe you are miles away, and this doesn’t affect you at all.

Today. It doesn’t affect you today.

The problem with hate groups is in their name. Their job is to hate. They go for the Drag shows first, thinking others won’t care about this community. Where do they direct their hate next? There are two sides in this war: love and hate. You have to pick which side is yours.

First, they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Pastor Martin Niemoller