A friend of mine recently joined a new inclusive Christian network, and wanted to know if I planned to sign up. He used the phrase ‘standing with the LGBTQ+ community’. I hesitated before replying, just as I’d hesitated a decade earlier when asked a similar question at a church in the North of England. The leadership had decided, almost overnight, to affiliate to an inclusive church network, and asked everybody in leadership to sign up. When I hesitated it sparked a tirade fr

In recent years drag has gone mainstream. Actually, it’s bigger than that. Drag has become all-conquering, ubiquitous, the performance art of the moment. The art of cross-dressing for entertainment has a long history, often confined to spaces frequented by consenting adults. By the late 20th century in Britain, drag was drawing an enthusiastic subculture to gay bars such as London’s Vauxhall Tavern, where Lily Savage (aka Paul O’Grady) became a cult figure. O’Grady consciousl