On May 5, 2018, Queer Alliance at the University of San Francisco will hold its annual “Drag Ball” at the University’s McLauren Conference Center. According to Queer Alliance:

This year’s theme: interGAYlatic! Far away in the GalPalaxy, we will be situated on planet McLaren…Guys, gals, and non-binary pals from all over the Queersar are all invited to join us for this fun night of dancing, food, performances, and drag of all varieties! It’ll be out of this world!

Founded in 2005, Queer Alliance is an officially approved student run club:

…that strives to create an inclusive and affirming space for all members of USF’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, pansexual, asexual, aromantic, and agender communities, as well as other Gender and Sexual Minorities (GSM) to support each other and continue to grow through higher education.

The USF “Advisor” for Queer Alliance is Assistant Director of Admission, Ava Agree.

Openly gay Jesuit Donal Godfrey currently serves as Associate Director for Faculty and Staff Spirituality at USF. In his book “Gays and Grays: The Story of the Gay Community at Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Parish” (2008) which recorded the integration of the LGBT community at Most Holy Reeemer (MHR) located in the predominantly gay Castro District, Godfrey wrote:

Is it less appropriate for gays to imagine Jesus as gay than for African Christians to picture him as black, Asian Christians as Asian?

In a 2015 article, Community Dialogue on Transgender Phenomenon: A Reflection,” published in “Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal,” Godfrey wrote:

Many trans Christians feel a sense of resurrection in that one part of them dies and another is reborn in their new gender…they are transfigured and resurrected in a way that defies categorization.

Earlier this year, on April 3, 2018, Queer Alliance hosted a discussion “about LGBTQ+ video games characters and queering the game industry.”

Prior to the 2017 USF “Drag Ball,” Queer Alliance offered a tutorial on “how to tuck and bind safely.” Tucking refers to a practice known among the transgender and drag communities involving the concealment of the penis and testicles between the legs, sometimes requiring the insertion of the testes up into the inguinal canals. Binding pertains to the forcible flattening out of the female breasts, occasionally through the use of elastic straps, in order to create a flat-chested male appearance.

Similar “drag show” events have taken place at DePaul University in Chicago, Seattle University (also see here) and the University of San Diego (see video from 2017 “show.”)

Is this what Jesuit James Martin had in mind when he asked the Catholic Church, in it’s outreach to the LGBT community, to promote “a culture of encounter and accompaniment?”