As some states work to ban drag queen events for minors, a Massachusetts high school recently hosted a drag queen whose description of himself and the show’s “secret weapon” is too lewd to print.
With full support of the faculty, police, and town officials, “Missy Steak” performed at a student body assembly at North High School in Newton, a community that borders Boston.
The event was organized by the student group Gender Sexuality Alliance.
In a YouTube series called Drag Gauntlet, Missy Steak uses a word to describe his ability to maintain sexual excitement (the “secret weapon”) despite “all the antidepressants I’m on.”
“I can do comedy, I can do sexy, and I will do it all on the cheap,” says his website, which also uses a phrase synonymous with prostitute to characterize his drag queen persona.
Some local parents looked into his background and came away outraged.
Henry Barbaro, whose child attends high school, said he was even more outraged when the Newton school’s officials—including the school committee—ignored parental concerns and questions about the event.
“They left parents on their own to try to determine the content of this performance,” he told The Epoch Times. “When we did ... we found these hypersexual and raunchy images.”
When the parents alerted the school committee about their findings, Barbaro said they were ignored.
In a statement supporting the event, Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller described the drag queen performance as Newton’s commitment to better understanding and celebrating individuality and diversity.
“As Mayor, I wholeheartedly and proudly support our LGBTQ+ students as they build awareness of and celebrate their identities. This day and this work are important and necessary to create a welcoming and inclusive school community.”
The event was held as part of the school’s annual To Be Glad Day, which celebrates gay pride.
The controversy comes shortly after the Massachusetts Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) launched an investigation of Newton schools after it was announced that only people of color could try out for the school play.
Massachusetts native Lonnie Brennan, editor of The Boston Broadside and an established advocate against liberalism, told The Epoch Times that Massachusetts has become a vestige of age-inappropriate activities like the one at Newton. He pointed out that the state’s new governor, Maura Healey, the nation’s first openly lesbian governor, had called for more drag queen events at schools while on the campaign trail.
Brennan modified a famous quote by President John F. Kennedy, another Massachusetts native, to emphasize his position that drag shows are just open grooming events for children.
“Ask not why there are drag queen shows in schools and libraries, ask instead why guys in gaudy and stripper women’s clothes crave audiences composed of children.”
Concern for Taxpayers
“My initial concern was [that] Newburyport Youth Services (NYS), which is financed by Newburyport tax payers, planned a drag queen event without any advance notice to the taxpayers,” he said, “We felt NYS was trying to hide this drag queen event from the taxpayer.”Despite news reports of explicit videos of “Miz. Diamond Wigfall” promoting drug use and lewd acts, Newburyport went ahead with the teen dance, with a local Masonic hall offering to host it for free.
Last year, Baribeault found himself at the center of a controversy after school officials called police and had him banned from school property for passing out flyers about an upcoming CRE meeting to parents as they waited in their cars on the street to pick up their children at school.
Both he and Barbaro said they have felt bullied by the very groups who profess to stand for diversity and tolerance, and have come to feel that their own government has joined in.
“Schools certainly have no empathy, concern or hesitation that using a drag queen as a role model may be having a negative impact on some kids, or an adverse effect on their mental health,” said Barbaro.
Earlier this year, local Christians pointed to the contradiction when they scheduled pastor story hours at some Massachusetts public libraries that had hosted drag queen story hours. All of the libraries initially canceled the pastor story hours, but restored them after they were threatened with discrimination lawsuits.
At times, violence has erupted across the nation. On the same day as the Newton school drag queen assembly, a man wearing a dress flipped over a display table belonging to the conservative campus group Turning Point USA at the University of Washington, a state-funded college in Seattle.
Last week at a California event sponsored by the same group, NCAA champion swimmer Riley Gaines—who gained national notoriety after objecting to competing against Lia Thomas, who swam for three years as a male—was trapped in a room for hours while an angry mob chanted threats. The incident at the San Francisco State University followed a speech Gaines gave about her experiences competing against a male.
Opponents of drag shows in schools and transgender ideology have found some success in protesting against companies who have engaged in woke marketing. After Anheuser-Busch hired trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote Bud Light, the beer company’s stock plummeted more than $5 billion.
The beer giant issued a statement over the controversy.
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer,” said Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth.
Also on the same day, Newton’s North High Principal Henry Turner did not respond to inquiries about the drag queen event held at the school on Friday.
An online community board called Village 14, named after the 14 neighborhoods that make up Newton, was riddled with comments in support of the event and drag queen events in general.
One local wrote “Good for the students, the administration, and the parents for standing up to this hatred.”
Another posted “Why don’t the protesters cross the river and protest at Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Club? Some of their alums haven’t turned out so badly.”
Each year, the university’s social club, founded in 1795, puts on an original, student-written burlesque musical that runs for a month in Cambridge, before going on tour.
