‘Gender-bending’ is not a threat

I recently watched the movie “Unbroken,” the saga of Louie Zamperini’s ordeal as a POW held by the Imperial Japanese military. The Allied prisoners staged a drag show in one scene. “Bridge on the River Kwai” was a favorite movie when I was a kid. Those Allied prisoners also staged a drag show.

The 1943 film “This Is the Army” motivated people in the US to join the war effort. Ronald Reagan starred. His character in that film stages a musical that includes a drag show. Don’t forget the shellback ceremonies staged on US Navy vessels. Sailors who cross the equator for the first time are “polliwogs” who are initiated into the club of “shellbacks.” Among the rituals? Drag contests!

I wasn’t harmed watching “Bridge on the River Kwai” as a kid. I laughed at the drag show as silly fun. The sitting president and his conservative acolytes are ignorant of a long-standing military tradition. We should never forget the Stonewall Riots were led by drag queens and trans women. That history belongs to all of us, not just LGBTQ people. Gender-bending is harmless fun, not a threat to freedom.

Jeff Klinzman

Coralville