[quote]Varqanir wrote:
“We” meaning who, particularly? Californians? Americans? Australians? Liberals? Conservatives? Christians? Muslims?
I imagine whatever most people thought about it today probably thought similar things about it ten years ago.
Perhaps SexMachine can tell us what the reaction of his countrymen was to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which was twenty years ago.
(If you have ever wondered what Hugo Weaving, Terence Stamp and Guy Pearce would look like as flaming drag queens, this is the movie for you.)
[/quote]
SYDNEY, Australia – The closing ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics is going to be a drag.
Cross-dressing drag queens will be part of the Games’ finale despite the controversy the move has sparked, ceremonies director Ric Birch said yesterday. He called critics of the plan “right-wing reactionaries.”
Birch also said that including the men who wear outlandish dresses, wigs and makeup in the closing ceremony is justified and a “part of one tiny section” of the event, a tribute to universally acclaimed Australian films that include the 1994 hit “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.”
The movie featured two drag queens and a transsexual driving a pink bus through Australia’s Outback. Some of the participants in the closing ceremony will be dressed in original costumes from the film, including a bright, frill-necked lizard outfit.
A report in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday sparked heated debate about the closing ceremony.
[b]The Rev. Fred Nile, a Christian Democratic politician, was opposed to including drag queens in the ceremonies and said allowing homosexual men to prance around dressed as women would be a national embarrassment.
“Drag queens do not truly represent our great Aussie culture at all,” said Nile[/b], who urged like-minded Australians to express their concerns to Sydney organizers.
One caller to a talk radio station said he would trade his closing ceremony ticket after hearing the news; conservative politicians condemned the idea.