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The UK Labour Party has set out its plan for the film and TV industries, drawing a dividing line between itself and the ruling Conservatives as it slams the government for getting themselves all tied up in culture wars of their own making and failing to support a pipeline of talent.

Delivering her first major set-piece at the Creative Cities Convention, Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire said she will not be fighting culture wars but instead will focus on arts and culture being central to Labours Phase One plan if it gets into office. Her boss, Labour leader Keir Starmer, is plotting a decade of national renewal in Britain. The election is expected later this year and Labour is currently sitting around 20 points ahead of the Conservatives in the polls.

Debbonaire set out Labours position in thorny areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), the BBC and the ailing freelance workforce.

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I Will Not Be Fighting Culture Wars: UK Shadow Culture Secretary Seeks To Draw Dividing Line Between Labour & ... - imdb

Democracy in America is in crisis. So begins James Davison Hunters new book Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of Americas Political Crisis. Few readers would disagree with his assertion.

Amid the crisis, American Christians have rediscovered political theology. From Catholic integralism to post-liberalism to Christian nationalism, were awash in proposals for a new political future. But Hunter first wants us to reassess our present problem. In his telling, our primary challenges are cultural, not political.

Contrary to the voices on both left and right who assert our troubled democracy can be repaired through political will and smart public policy, Hunter argues the problem is deeper: We no longer have the cultural resources to work through what divides us (18). If his reasoning is correct, our societal illness is more advanced and our moment more urgent than we realize.

Is there a future for liberal democracy? Perhaps not. But if there is, it lies along the path of repairing and rebuilding our cultures deep structures.

Yale University Press. 504 pp.

James Davison Hunter, who introduced the concept of culture wars thirty years ago, tells us in this new book that those historic sources of national solidarity have now largely dissolved. While a deepening political polarization is the most obvious sign of this, the true problem is not polarization per se but the absence of cultural resources to work through what divides us. The destructive logic that has filled the void only makes bridging our differences more challenging. In the end, all political regimes require some level of unity. If it cannot be generated organically, it will be imposed by force.

Yale University Press. 504 pp.

As his books title suggests, Hunter frames the problem of modern democracy in terms of solidarity. We tend to think of solidarity as the willingness to come together with other people. But Hunter argues that solidarity . . . is about the cultural preconditions and the normative sources that make coming together possible in the first place (xii). Hes not arguing Americans dont want to come together. Hes arguing weve lost the cultural resources that make coming together possible.

Hes not arguing Americans dont want to come together. Hes arguing weve lost the cultural resources that make coming together possible.

Hunter is one of Americas most eminent sociologists. Since 1983, hes held a teaching post at the University of Virginia, and in 1995, he founded the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the same institution. Like his mentor Peter Berger, hes taken a keen interest in the problem of moral order. His 1991 book Culture Wars catapulted that term into our national consciousness, and his 2010 work To Change the World was the most provocative analysis of Christian cultural engagement since Niebuhrs Christ and Culture. Democracy and Solidarity applies his trademark emphasis on the deep structures of culture to our failing political ecosystem.

Americas motto is e pluribus unum, out of many, one. How much pluribus is allowed within the unum? And how do the boundaries of the unum work against the pluribus? These questions have been repeatedly confronted during our national history, and our ability to work through them has made American democracy resilient. But the cultural framework that has underwritten our ability to cooperate is beginning to unravel. Hunter writes,

For quite some time, the culture that has underwritten liberal democracy in America (and in Europe too) has been unraveling. The cultural sources that made it possible in the first place have, in the most elemental ways, dissolved, and all of the efforts to reconfigure and revivify those cultural sources over the decades . . . have [failed]. (49)

American Christians have a bad habit of fixating on culture-war issues at a surface level. Hunters analysis takes us deeper, inviting us to see the erosion of our frameworks for meaning. Once, we shared a background consensus about issues of knowledge, purpose, and ethics. The loss of those shared ideals is the real story underneath our political polarization.

We can summarize Hunters story about the decay of American democracy in five basic movements.

This is Hunters term for the unique recipe of ideas that birthed American democracy. The British and Scottish Enlightenment, the classical natural-law tradition, Greek and Roman republicanism, Protestant Calvinism, and Puritan millennialism all melded together in a lively and evolving syncretism. These are the ideals weve been fighting over ever since, and theyre the basis for our cultural solidarity.

Hunter deploys the concept of working through (borrowed from the field of psychiatry) to describe the dynamics by which cultures work through their contradictions historically and sociologically (28). For example, America was founded on the premise that all people are created equal. In practice, weve never lived up to that vision. Our national history is the story of how weve tried to work through that contradiction to achieve solidarity.

In our disagreements about social and political issues, Americans have always shared a cultural logic that allowed us to make sense of our differences and argue meaningfully about them. But the cultural logic of liberal democracy, rooted in hybrid-Enlightenment ideals, has gradually been supplanted by the cultural logic of nihilism:

Critique and blame are totalizing. Nuance and complexity are minimized. . . . Every group defines itself against some other group, the net effect of which is the destruction of common life. (335)

The surface-level dysfunction in our society is merely a symptom. The real problem is a fracture in the deep structures of our culture: our assumptions about metaphysics (what is real), epistemology (how we know), anthropology (what is a human), ethics (how humans should act), and teleology (what it all means). Hunter writes, American public life is divided . . . not only in its vocabulary, but in its premises about what is real and true and how we know these things, about what is right and just, and about what the nation is and what it should be (324).

Late-stage democracy has suffered a great unraveling; were facing societal exhaustion. The hybrid-Enlightenment ideals that once united us have lost their force. Our cultural resources for working through differences have been depleted. Both left and right have abandoned the pursuit of solidarity through persuasion or compromise. This unraveling didnt happen overnight; theres a history here, and Hunter spends the bulk of his book walking the reader through it. But the result is a weakening of liberal democracys cultural infrastructure (292).

For Hunter, the key to the issue isnt the past; its the present. His discussion of current conditions will most benefit the patient reader. Hunter sees the same things you see: political polarization, identity politics, authoritarian impulses on the right and left, a media environment that rewards outrage, a public culture of anger and victimhood. As youd expect from much of Hunters earlier work, it doesnt lend itself to direct practical application. But if youve followed his argument thus far, he hopes youll begin to see these realities in a different light.

Both left and right have abandoned the pursuit of solidarity through persuasion or compromise.

And that, it seems, is Hunters project. He wants us to attend to the cultural roots of Americas political crisis (as the books subtitle states). Without minimizing the important role of law and public policy, Hunter wants to elevate our attentiveness to the health (or unhealth) of our public culture.

Instead of being co-opted into the culture wars, thoughtful Christians have an opportunity to rehabilitate the deep structures of American culture. But well only give ourselves to that work if we reject the logic of nihilism and embrace the possibility of a common good.

Hunters hopestated briefly in a coda that follows the last chapteris for a paradigm shift within liberal democracy itself that would lead to a reinvigorated liberalism. Im more inclined to surmise liberalism has run its course and that our future lies in a more post-liberal direction. But even where I disagree with his solutions, Im provoked by Hunters analysis of the problem.

Democracy and Solidarity offers a trenchant examination of our cultural rupture thats alarming, informative, and interesting. Its a book well be arguing about for years to come.

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Review: 'Democracy and Solidarity' by James Davison Hunter - The Gospel Coalition

THE ISSUE

Lancaster Countys two Republican commissioners on Tuesday appointed three newcomers to the Library System of Lancaster Countys board, opting not to reappoint two members, including the seven-member volunteer boards only professional librarian, LNP | LancasterOnlines Tom Lisi reported. In a 2-1 vote, with Democratic Commissioner Alice Yoder voting against, Commissioners Josh Parsons and Ray DAgostino declined to give new terms to librarian Alexandra Godfrey, of Lancaster city, and Cody Diehl, an Elizabethtown church leader and former health care administrator. ... In letters to the board of commissioners, the systems executive director, Karla Trout, had recommended that both members be reappointed.

Parsons and DAgostino seem intent on sowing division and chaos.

Why? Are they miffed because they were blamed for the dangerous threats directed at Lancaster Public Librarys planned Drag Queen Story Hour after they kicked up a fuss about it? Are they taking out their anger on the Library System of Lancaster County because the Lancaster library is one of its 14 members? Having easily won reelection in November, are they so confident about their place in the fiefdom of county government that theyve abandoned any pretense of working for the good of all county residents?

We have to wonder, because these library appointments were so brazenly contemptuous of both the library system and the many county residents who rely on it to function effectively.

The three new appointees approved last week are Theia Hofstetter of Elizabethtown; Lampeter-Strasburg School District board member Andrew Welk of West Lampeter Township; and unsuccessful Manheim Township School District board candidate Tess Vo Wallace.

The appointees seem already to be acquiescing to the code of silence imposed on Lancaster County government by the Republican commissioners. None of the three responded to requests from an LNP | LancasterOnline news reporter for comment.

Nonprofit boards are made up of all kinds of people whose paid work doesnt necessarily translate to the mission of the organization they oversee. So were not concerned about the day jobs of the new appointees. What concerns us is that Wallace and Hofstetter seem to be coming to the library system board with agendas.

As Lisi reported, Hofstetter in the past has called for banning from school libraries certain books that include sexual themes. Trying to justify child pornography in a book because the overall story has merit is like trying to justify taking a minor to a strip joint because the dancing has artistic value, Hofstetter said at an Elizabethtown Area School District meeting in February 2022.

No school library in Lancaster County offers books containing child pornography. Possessing or distributing child pornography is a crime.

But depicting books with sexual content as pornographic is a tactic of would-be book banners. Last year, Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams, a Republican, was forced to waste her time explaining why she would not file frivolous charges over several library books in the Hempfield School District.

Hofstetters language on this was ridiculous and inflammatory perhaps its not surprising then that Parsons and DAgostino chose her.

Wallace is a surgical nurse whose affiliation with a local Moms for Liberty private Facebook group came to light during her failed school board campaign. According to the worldview she has embraced on social media, pro-LGBTQ+ public policies are part of a global conspiracy aimed at erasing women and the biological reality of gender.

Welk is a real estate agent who, according to his resume, also has served as a firefighter and paramedic (we thank him for his public service). He donated $500 to DAgostinos reelection campaign last fall.

As Lisi reported, Parsons and DAgostino declined to say last Tuesday whether they had preexisting relationships with the prospective board members. Parsons only would say that they knew some applicants from around the community.

Thats not exactly reassuring, given that Parsons has been photographed in the past with members of the far-right antidemocratic group FreePA. In fact, a photo of a smiling Parsons, giving a double thumbs-up and flanked by FreePA activists, remains on that groups website.

Parsons and DAgostino also repeatedly declined to say whether close political allies should be appointed to local boards, Lisi reported.

We are all elected to implement certain policies, Parsons said.

What county commissioners are elected to do is to manage and administer county government and award contracts. And yes, their role includes naming citizens to boards, commissions and authorities, according to the county website.

Citizens, not partisan flamethrowers, such as Wallace and Hofstetter.

The county library system is a mostly behind-the-scenes organization that provides technology support to member libraries, as well as other centralized services, such as continuing education training, collective purchasing and negotiating vendor discounts.

Our concern is that these purposely divisive appointments are going to throw a wrench into the way the library system operates. Perhaps thats the goal. We truly hope it isnt.

So we ask this of the new appointees: Please behave like adults and work cooperatively for the good of this countys public libraries. Those libraries play an essential role in the lives of county residents who rely on them for educational enrichment, research, career development, internet access, their vast collections of books and their diverse array of events that connect community members with one another.

The library system board works to ensure that the county library infrastructure works smoothly. It does not deal in culture wars. The board member role demands pragmatism, not partisanship. So please seek cooperation, not controversy. The work shouldnt generate headlines, but its important.

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Library System of Lancaster County board doesn't traffic in culture wars. Partisan appointees should take heed. [editorial] - LNP | LancasterOnline

NEW YORK This past August, in Murfreesboro, Tenn., the drag queen Sasha Velour shook the hands of a pair of anti-drag activists, as TV cameras recorded. Velour was dressed in head-to-toe silver, looking like an art deco skyscraper, with red lips, contoured cheeks and catlike eyeliner. The activists a bearded father and his teenage daughter called her sir. They said that God created man with a penis and woman with a vagina. They referenced the Bible and referred to the LGBTQ religion as a cult. They told her: Somethings wrong with you.

Velour invoked the separation of church and state. She talked about the variety in terms of chromosomal gender. She added: Theres nothing immoral about loving someone.

Velour parried ignorant comments with a firm politeness, like a lawyer disarming a hostile witness. She never lost her composure. To us, she gently told the activists, this sounds like hatred.

This encounter takes place in the third episode of the new season of HBOs Were Here, a reality series in which drag queens visit small-town America and face stereotypical resistance from locals (the show returns to Max on April 26). She was a long way from New York, where her art is revered, her shows sell out, and she is developing a stage show with Broadway ambitions.

To some drag fans, Velour may not have seemed like the most obvious queen to send to the front lines of the culture wars. The winner of Season 9 of RuPauls Drag Race, in 2017, Velour is known for her highbrow, cerebral interpretation of drag, and for her reveals drag lingo for little surprises built into a performance. Hers is the kind of drag that feels like true performance art, not like an appetizer for a boozy brunch.

The protests she encountered while filming the show felt like drag, in its own way, she would say later. They dress up, they put on their red hats, and put on demented, wrong drag, where its like youre performing something, and theres no acknowledgment that its a performance. And its really designed to make people feel unsafe and weak and small unlike real drag, which, at its best, makes the crowd (and the performer) feel joyful and empowered.

So Velour stood strong and tall, towering in heels over the pair of activists.

Im grateful that this young woman and her father want to speak with us, Velour said to the TV cameras, but it doesnt feel like they really want to have a conversation. Theyre not going to hear us.

In one America, drag is practically illegal. In another, its never been more mainstream. Some drag artists get picketed and threatened with arrest, while others get Super Bowl commercials and Emmy Awards. The emotional and geographical distance between the two is growing depressingly distant.

Velour, 36, has become a traveler between these disparate lands. Having reached an echelon of drag fame below only RuPaul, Velour could have stayed ensconced in New York, leaving only to play sold-out crowds on her national and European tours. Shes doing those things, too, but shes also fighting with conservatives for her freedom of expression, and for the rights of queer people in small towns.

Six months later and 900 miles away from Murfreesboro, Velour is sitting in her art-filled Brooklyn home with her Italian greyhound, Vanya, lounging nearby. Her partner, Johnny, is upstairs with covid. This return to reality TV is a move that Velour joked about dreading in the intro to her 2023 memoir and drag history book, The Big Reveal.

Will such a move make a difference? Could a performance amid people who hate her art change their hearts and minds about it? She demurred.

If anything, Velour says, I think our ability to be visible on TV is a reflection of the work activists do on the ground to shift culture and to change up institutions, and to illuminate for powerful people where their blind spots are.

A few days prior, at a rehearsal space in Times Square, a group of powerful people (i.e. potential investors) was prepared to open their wallets for her theatrical project, a drag history that also explores how she went from Alexander Hedges Steinberg the theatrical, vampire-obsessed queer child of academics in Urbana, Ill. to Sasha Velour, drag superstar.

The show, opening in San Diego in August, is based on Velours book, which traces drag from ancient shamanistic ritual to Elizabethan theater and Chinese opera.

Director Moiss Kaufman who considers Velour one of the best performers of her generation introduced the presentation, standing before a makeshift white curtain that looked like bedsheets. Everything you see has been made with spit and glue, Kaufman told attendees. If something crashes, thats drag.

But Velours drag is not ad hoc or ramshackle. It is precise, considered, sharpened to a knifes edge. She emerged through those bedsheet-curtains and stretched a spike-heeled foot to the sky. She wore a showgirl headdress and was surrounded by a video projection of four versions of Sasha Velour making her, in effect, her own backup dancers. Then she competed with these avatars for the spotlight in increasingly comic and then aggressive ways. They spilled virtual marbles and tripped her, trying to sabotage her act. She pushed them back behind the curtain. They closed in on her. She let out, to the tune of Aerosmiths Dream On, a lip-synced scream.

Our art literally gets criminalized, she says during another number. Our voices, often discredited. But not tonight.

Every good drag show has a reveal, and every reveal contains a greater truth. So its tempting to view the offstage version of Sasha Velour as the real Sasha Velour sans makeup, wearing a black turtleneck and angular glasses, looking like shes about to teach a college course on neo-expressionism.

With drag queens, everyone will focus on unmasking the person and seeing, you know, who they really are, Velour says at home. Theres something kind of faulty about that. Many people, she says, find out who they really are through drag, through fantasy.

Velour began to find that through her grandmother Dina, a Ukrainian immigrant to San Francisco and failed actress, who encouraged a young Velour to dress up in dramatic costumes and perform skits. Velours father taught Russian history, and her mother edited a scholarly journal. They were supportive of their childs sexuality and drag ambitions, and Velours book praises their seriously good parenting. The influence of their academic rigor can be seen throughout her book, which delves into unheralded gender-nonconforming performers in history, including Barbette (a 1920s drag aerialist), Coccinelle (a French actress who, in 1958, underwent gender-affirming surgery), and Washingtons own William Dorsey Swann (a former enslaved person known as the queen of drag).

Velour entered the pantheon herself because of three simple, perfect reveals in the semifinals of Drag Race Season 9, which aired five chaotic months into the presidency of Donald Trump, but before Republicans focused their sights on queer literature and drag.

Velour was considered the avant-garde underdog against her competitor, Shea Coule, who had won more challenges that season. But as soon as they started to lip-sync Whitney Houstons So Emotional, Velour ran away with the show. She began to rip the petals off a rose, mouthing the lyrics with a snarl. At the first emotional crest of the song I get so emotional, baby she plucked off an elbow-length glove and unleashed an arching spray of hidden rose petals. She teased off the other glove, burlesque-style, as the second verse began, sending up another burst of petals. When the song reached its climax, she lifted her crimson wig, arms quivering, to unleash a cascade of petals onto her signature shaved head a tribute to her mother, who died of cancer in 2015.

Most Drag Race reveals had, until this point, consisted of ripping off a dress to display another outfit underneath, or taking off a long wig to reveal a short one a neat trick, but one that didnt capture the emotional catharsis of a song, or reinterpret it entirely. Velours So Emotional wasnt about the romantic swell of love; it was about out-of-control obsession, vulnerability and savagery. In her 1987 music video, Whitney Houston smiled and cooed her way through So Emotional. When Velour lip-synced the song, she sneered and raged and flared her eyes. She field-dressed a bubbly pop song into a meaty, manic breakdown.

The rose petals were one reveal within a larger reveal. The audience, electrified, leaped to its feet.

Within 24 hours of her arrival in Murfreesboro, seven years after her win, someone shouted the age-old slur F-----s! at Velour and one of her co-stars, Priyanka, a winner of the Canadian version of Drag Race.

Thank you, Velour replied. I love that word!

Despite her impervious reply, shooting episodes of Were Here brought Velour back to her teenage years, living in a small town, being the only gay person she knew. She was used to online trolls, in 2023, but to hear hateful words directly, to her face, after so much progress?

That was pretty new for me, Velour says.

The life of a modern drag queen: caught between abject adoration and casual degradation.

When they meet her, fans sometimes pull off wigs and shower the floor with petals, and Velour is always polite, even though its equivalent to, say, a person performing a scene from Kramer vs. Kramer in front of Meryl Streep (Its sweet, Velour says, diplomatically).

Early seasons of Were Here, which premiered in 2020, could be summed up with a pithy elevator pitch: Queer Eye, but for drag. Queens traveled the states, performed makeovers on queer locals and allies, shared bittersweet personal stories, and finished the episode off with a joyous drag show.

Then came the drag bans. Were Here creators Stephen Warren and Johnnie Ingram decided that the show needed to change its format. Season 4 spends more time in two communities Murfreesboro and Bartlesville, Okla. that had effectively banned drag in public, at least for a time (Murfreesboros ban was repealed in December; Bartlesvilles one-year restriction expired this month).

When Velour was announced as a new cast member, Steve Morris, a political reporter, wrote dryly on Twitter: Sasha Velour asking rural southerners if theyve read Judith Butler. The implication was that Velour who had considered impersonating the famous gender-studies scholar on Drag Race was too erudite to connect with real Americans, and it wasnt really fair to either party; Oklahomans and Tennesseans read gender theory, too.

But the perception of Velour has always been that of a highbrow academic. She studied literature at Vassar. She received a Fulbright Scholarship to study public art and urban identity in Moscow. She is fluent in Russian. Her book notes that her favorite philosopher is the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, who believed that a single person exists beyond definition particularly definitions imposed by external forces.

Velour even illustrated a cover of the New Yorker with her own face she has an MFA in cartooning and told the magazine that the most revolutionary aspect of drag isnt this act of dressing up against the rules; its the way we use this no-bulls--- philosophy to stand up for what is right.

To people who dont really know Sasha Velour, she comes across like an art piece that should be hanging in a museum, you know? says Priyanka.

The Sasha Velour in Were Here may soften that perception. The reveal is that she makes a great drag mother, as mentors are called within a community where many performers are rejected by their own families. She is behind some of the shows moments of tenderness, such as accompanying a newly transitioning woman on a trip to buy her first wig.

But the producers, aware of her stiletto-sharp mind, also deployed her to interact with bigots. Velour is the queen who parses a Murfreesboro ordinance, to understand the legal definition of prurient interests. In August, the cast attended a Murfreesboro city council meeting on this decency legislation. The experience shook Velour.

During the meeting, Priyanka said that Velour was breathing so heavily. And I was like, Are you okay? And shes like, Im just getting so overwhelmed because I cannot believe what Im seeing.

Were Here draws parallels between drag and other forms of dress-up and fantasy, such as pro wrestling and the child beauty-pageant circuit (the latter actually sexualizes minors, Velour notes). And, of course, there is the protesters American flag drag as symbolic and ostentatious as any sequined, high-haired, RuPaul-ready outfit.

Arent we all performing, though, regardless of whether were on or off a stage? We put on different faces for friends, family, work. We reveal ourselves in our own ways, sometimes through a glance, sometimes through a joke, sometimes through a protest. We dress for the role, and the role is ever-changing and incomplete.

As Bakhtin wrote in 1929: Nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world.

Or as RuPaul famously said: Were all born naked, and the rest is drag.

The cast and producers of Were Here have no idea how the people in these communities will react to the show, but Velour gets the last word. The seasons final scene takes place in an Oklahoma church not far from the town where Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teenager, died in February after intense bullying (their death was ruled a suicide by the state medical examiner). Velours performance in the church culminates in what might be her greatest reveal yet. Its not a prop surprise, like a flurry of rose petals, or the inversion of a famous song. The reveal is meant to make an entire community an entire country, really confront itself.

Will anyone hear the message? Will it change anything?

I dont think entertainment is enough, Velour says, at her dining room table in Brooklyn. But I think the emotional impact on the audience can be really profound. Profound enough to save a life, she adds. So the answer, actually, is yes.

In Judaism, Velours religion, one who saves a single life has saved the whole world, according to the Talmud. And Velour, according to her own book and aligned with the philosophy of Bakhtin supposes that a single life is only truly perceptible when its over.

The biggest reveal, she writes, is death.

When asked at home to elaborate, Velour reveals a bit more: Ive always been compelled by the idea that our afterlife is how our story gets told and how were remembered, and that we give people an afterlife by remembering them and telling their story.

An hour before a February show at Le Poisson Rouge, in Greenwich Village, Velour was washing her makeup sponges, surrounded by a trio of pink wigs. When she was coming onto the scene, years earlier, she felt pushback against alternative forms of drag. Now it feels like experimental drag is mainstream drag.

Near Velours dressing room, a D.C. drag king named King Molasses trimmed a luxuriously thick faux beard. NightGowns is a North Star for so many of us, said Molasses, referring to Velours monthly revue, which for nine years has given guest stars a chance to tell their own stories, often through drag that is abstract, experimental or just plain bizarre.

A drag show at a bar, where performers work for tips, isnt the best environment for true artistry or adventure, said Sapphira Cristl, a finalist on the current season of Drag Race, as she was getting ready backstage.

But when Sasha Velour is the curator, Sapphira says, we get to feel like true artists, and be respected that way.

A trained opera singer, Sapphiras second NightGowns performance that night was a confrontational lip-sync about black femininity, to Danielle Brookss Black Woman.

Nymphia Wind, another finalist on the current season of Drag Race, began her lip-sync to Take It All, from the musical Nine, like a typical burlesque number, with backup dancers. But it became a balletic assault a commentary on violence against the queer community. The dancers stripped off Nymphias clothes and carried her limp body. And then she began a dreamy, sinewy dance to FKA Twigs Mothercreep that ended with her being draped in a sheet, like a corpse, or a ghost.

Death: the biggest reveal.

Addressing the rapt, sold-out crowd at Le Poisson Rouge later that night, Velour proclaimed that notion as her guiding light.

My only spiritual belief, really, is that by dressing up in drag, we connect with the generations that came before us, she said from the stage, dressed in a shimmery caftan. We put on drag sometimes as protest, sometimes as community, sometimes as a little hustle. Always as art.

Shot at Love Studios. Makeup by Velour. Styling by Willyum Beck. Velour wears dresses by Quine Li and Attico, shoes by Pleasers and models own, jewelry by Robert Sorrell and Misho, gloves by Wing & Weft, mask by Lory Sun.

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Drag queen Sasha Velour stars in Season 4 of Max's 'We're Here' - The Washington Post - The Washington Post

Advances in medicine over the past 50 years represent a shining example of the power of combining humanism and science to save lives and foster love. St. John Paul II celebrated these developments and emphasized the need to use them responsibly when he stated in 2000:

When those limits are followed, medicine can serve its goal of defending and promoting human dignity and, when appropriate, acceptance of the human condition in the face of death (Evangelium vitae, No. 65).

This brings us to the complicated dynamics of declaring death in an increasingly technologically complicated set of clinical circumstances. The Catholic Church, as always, is offering a significant contribution to this ethical conversation, and we believe it is time to offer clarification in light of some well-intended but misguided advice from voices within the church. Such clarification is based on our collective expertise as members of the clergy, clinicians and ethicists because understanding the issues at hand requires a multidisciplinary approach that is both theoretically and practically well-informed.

The authors and signatories of a recently published document called Catholics United on Brain Death and Organ Donation: A Call to Action have condemned the use of neurological criteria for determining that patients have died and the view that it is ethically permissible to recover their vital organs in these circumstances if they or their loved ones have consented to donation. Their statement concludes that Catholics should conscientiously refuse permission for such neurological testing and that Catholic health care practitioners should refuse to use such criteria to declare someone dead. Consequently, they also call upon Catholics to refuse to be organ donors.

First of all, the documents title is a misnomer. Far from promoting unity within the church, it will undoubtedly create disunity, confusion and even scandal among the faithful. For example, there is widespread public confusion regarding the colloquial termbrain death. The use of this term often incorrectly conflates those declared dead using neurological criteria with patients in a persistent vegetative state, like Terri Schiavo, whose death in 2005 followed intense debate both within and outside of the church. Her brother, Bobby Schindler, is one of the statements signatories. The misappropriation of the term brain death, even by medical professionals, leaves many vulnerable to being exploited by fear.

Moreover, although the list of signatories includes several health care professionals, we are aware of Catholic neurologists, critical care and transplant physicians, and ethicists working in Catholic health care who were approached and explicitly chose not to sign the document because they adamantly disagreed with it on medical and bioethical grounds. There is an evident lack of insight in the statement regarding the realities of clinical practice and how determination of death by neurological criteria and organ recovery actually works in hospitals. There is a strong difference between theory and practice.

At the centerpiece of the statement is the concern that the current Uniform Determination of Death Act, the model legislation first crafted in 1981 and thereafter adopted by every U.S. state and territory, is being routinely violated because it requires irreversible loss of all functions of the entire brain. If, as the statement notes, more than half of patients declared dead using neurological criteria have persistent neuroendocrine function via the hypothalamus, then, they argue, the U.D.D.A. criterion is not being met. However, from the beginning this criterion has never been understood to entail that every single part of the brain must have irreversibly ceased functioning for death to be declared. As neurologist James Bernat and others have argued since the early 1980s, specific critical functions of the brain need to remain intact for a human body to be alive.

If we stipulate that every last neuron in the brain must cease firing before we declare someone dead, we would have to abandon even traditional cardiopulmonary means of determining death andawait the onset of putrefaction. This cannot be what St. John Paul II meant when he said, in an address to the International Congress of the Transplantation Society in 2000, complete cessation of brain activity is morally required. He said as much himself in that address when he acknowledged that scientific approaches to ascertaining death had shifted from cardio-respiratory signs to neurological criterion:

This has long been the understanding of the U.D.D.A.s requirement regarding all functions of the entire brain. It was always meant to clarify that both the cerebrum and the brain stem must be dead, and that being in a persistent vegetative state does not constitute death.

Discussions about including the hypothalamus and other parts of the diencephalon in brain death testing were well known at the time of St. John Paul IIs statement in 2000, as well as thelegal clinical mismatch between what the U.D.D.A. requires for death to be declared by neurological criteria and what is done in clinical practice, where testing for hypothalamic function has never been required for determination of death. Why is this the case? It is because the hypothalamus does not play a central role in preserving the human organisms integrative unity. The hypothalamus produces hormones related to reproduction and puberty, and it tells the body to manage its fluid homeostasis, temperature, satiety, sleep and blood pressure. These are vegetative functions but not functions fundamental for life in the way that brain-stem-coordinated circulation of oxygenated blood and respiration are.

Indeed, people can live well without a hypothalamus (e.g., after removal from surgery due to a tumor extraction) with exogenous hormonal replacement. The brains other structures can be irreversibly destroyed (with no potential for recovery) and the hypothalamus can be preserved because of collateral blood flow from blood vessels external to the brain if organ support is maintained via IV fluids and a ventilator to stabilize blood pressure and oxygen levels. This is similar to medical technology that allows aheart to beat in a box outside the body, as in cardiac transplantation. Clearly a heart outside of a body is not a living person, yet the hearts tissue and neural pathways can be stimulated to make the heart beat.

Thus, while it is the case anatomically with hypothalamic function preserved that not all functions of the entire brain have ceased, it is the case functionally that patients determined to be dead by neurological criteriawill never regain consciousness or breathe independently again, irrespective of whether neuroendocrine function is present or not.

If St. John Paul II meant to include the hypothalamus in the above listing for brain death, or similar neuroendocrine structures like the pituitary gland, surely he would have done so. Instead, he went on to say, With regard to the parameters used today for ascertaining deathwhether the encephalic signs or the more traditional cardio-respiratory signsthe Church does not make technical decisions (Address to the 18th International Congress of the Transplantation Society, No. 5). The pope here reflects the wisdom of St. Augustine when he warned, in his Literal Commentary on the Book of Genesis, against Christians speaking about scientific matters outside of their expertise, lest they be laughed at and the faith be scandalized (Book I, Chapter 19, Paragraph 39).

We thus come to the crucial question of the role of the hypothalamus with respect to the integrative unity of a living human body. Does the hypothalamus fulfill a critical function in terms of bodily integration, control or behavior? For the reasons outlined above, it is evident it does not. While undoubtedly playing an important role in the vegetative effects of the brain, there is no evidence that hypothalamic function is either necessary or sufficient for the persistent integrative life of a mature human organism.

In fact, it is not substantively different from the function of other endocrine glands like the adrenal glands that lie above the kidneys, yet no one believes testing for adrenal function is relevant for determining death.

Thus, the authors of the statement Catholics United on Brain Death and Organ Donation: A Call to Action seem to mistake the hypothalamuss location as being more relevant than its function. This is why some other legal jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, require only irreversible cessation ofbrainstem function, given its unique and irreplaceable role in preserving and regulating cardiopulmonary function.

It is also worth highlighting, as the statements authors note, that assessing hypothalamic function has not been included as a requirement for determining death going back to the 1995 guidelines from the American Academy of Neurology. So why has attention now been drawn to this small area of the brain? One speculative explanation is the increasingly deep-seated attitudes that inform Americas current culture wars, leading to an overarching hermeneutic of suspicion regarding the A.A.N. criteria and the medical profession in general. The scrupulous fear that giving the gift of oneself through organ donation to extend the lives of others will prematurely cause ones own death ends up fomenting fear, discord and disunity within the church.

The arguments against the use of neurological criteria have yet to prove persuasive to either the medical community or the churchs magisterium after multiple studies in the 1980s and 2000s by thePontifical Academy of Sciences. Thus, while we agree that the current neurological criteria should continue to be critically examined and refined where needed, and that there needs to be legal and moral accountability to ensure the integrity of how death is ascertained, it is inappropriate to reject the clinical use of neurological criteria altogether and sow distrust between Catholics and their health care providers, as well as Catholic hospitals and society as a whole, by calling for conscientious refusal of neurological determination of death and organ donation.

The potential ramifications of such confusion and distrust are manifold, not only with respect to organ donationabout 2 percent of all in-hospital deaths are declared using neurological criteria; only about 20 percent of the patients declared dead using neurological criteria become organ donorsbut more especially regarding family decision-making concerning continued technological intervention to sustain vegetative operations. Rather than accepting the reality that natural death has occurred and maintaining faithful hope in a future resurrection, families may feel compelled to cling to the false hope of their loved ones technologically mediated recovery, as witnessed in the recent case of Jahi McMath.

Promoting such false hope, by making brain death the latest battlefront in the ongoing culture wars, places an undue burden on families at a time of immense grief when they are most in need of clear pastoral guidance and the healing that comes from accepting our mortality while faithfully acknowledging that death is not finalthis is the churchs unified Gospel message.

Jason T. Eberl is the Hubert Mder chair in health care ethics, professor of health care ethics and philosophy, and director of the Albert Gnaegi Center for health care ethics at Saint Louis University. He is the editor of Contemporary Controversies in Catholic Bioethics (Springer, 2017).

Becket Gremmels is system vice president for theology and ethics at CommonSpirit Health.

The Most Rev. Michael F. Olson is the bishop of Fort Worth. He is a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Doctrine and serves as the chair of that committees Subcommittee on Health Care Issues.

E. Wesley Ely is the founder and co-director of the Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction, Survivorship Center and the Grant W. Liddle Endowed Chair of Medicine and Critical Care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the associate director of aging research at the Tennessee Valley Geriatric Research Education Clinical Center.

The Rev. John J. Raphael is a priest of the Diocese of Nashville, staff chaplain/specialist for Catholic ministry and bedsideethics consultant at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital West. He is a contributing author to Catholic Health Care Ethics: A Manual for Practitioners (3rd edition, National Catholic Bioethics Center.)

Allen J. Aksamit is professor and consultant in neurology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. He has served asthe education division chair in neurology and has subspecialty expertise in neurovirology and neurosarcoidosis. He sits on committees of the American Neurological Association and the American Academy of Neurology.

Laura B. Webster serves as the vice president of ethics in the northwest region of CommonSpirit Health, is an affiliate faculty member at the University of Washington School of Medicine in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities, and is a volunteer community nurse. She worked as a nurse in the neuroICU and the emergency department of a level-one trauma center for over a decade.

The views expressed here are the authors own and do not necessarily represent the policy and practice of their affiliated organizations.

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The danger of turning 'brain death' and organ donation into culture war issues - America: The Jesuit Review