Wilson Gavin, drag queen story time, and on being a queer conservative

I’ve never met Wilson Gavin, who was the president of the University of Queensland Liberal-National Club, amongst other hats he wore. I only knew of him through mutual friends in the Australian Monarchist League, and I can confirm that he is not the man the keyboard warriors and the Twitterati trolls made him out to be. Indeed, his family has noted: “To those who have described Wilson as ‘a deeply troubled young man’, including so-called family members — with all due respect — you never knew him”.

No one really knows what was going through his mind last Monday morning. All we know is that the day prior to his suicide, Wil led a protest opposing a drag queen story time event. Although the protest took place just after the event had concluded, it’s still not a great idea for adults to emotionally confront each other in front of children. Perhaps if the protest was outside the library in Brisbane instead, and/or the confrontation wasn’t caught on camera, perhaps the protest wouldn’t have generated the heated debate we now have in Australia over drag queen story time. Igniting debate appears to be the goal of the protest, a goal that was achieved, but no, it wasn’t worth Wil’s life.

The event was run by Rainbow Families Queensland, a group for LGBT families, where drag queens read to children ages 3–11, spread the message of diversity and inclusion, whilst also encouraging reading amongst the same age group. Naturally, this has generated a debate over ‘should drag queens be telling stories to our young children in Australia’s public libraries’? But are drag queens a problem per se?

Here’s a better question: are parents ultimately responsible for what their children are allowed or not allowed to attend, watch, read etc? Should the government be less involved in the parenting of children in order to put it back on parents to take more responsibility for their children? If there really needed to be a confrontation, then the confrontation should’ve been between the protesters and the children’s parents. Still not worth Wilson’s life though, and ultimately, the protesters are not the parents of the children, the parents are the parents of their children.

Despite what I think of Wil’s views and actions, at least some in the LGBTQIA community and their supporters deserve criticism. It seems to me that some people don’t think diversity and inclusion extends to political and social opinion. Wil was a gay man who publicly opposed marriage equality during the 2017 marriage postal survey. And you guessed it: Wil was derided for being a self-hating queer conservative, and that wasn’t the only time he was derided for such. As if to say that LGBTQIA identity can only be inherently politically progressive and/or leftist. But why can’t we live in a civil society where different opinions can co-exist irrespective of identity?

I empathise with Wil, not because I agree with all of his politics, but because both of us took the road less travelled. Coming out as a transwoman was hard, but coming out as a conservative after I had transitioned genders was much harder. Since becoming more politically and socially conservative over recent years, it has not been uncommon for me to also be derided as a self-hating queer conservative, on social media or otherwise. I can’t speak on behalf of Wil, but believe me, I don’t hate myself for being openly trans, because if I did, I wouldn’t be openly trans.

The truth is, accusing a queer conservative of unsubstantiated self-hatred is quite frankly, homophobic and/or transphobic. Fighting alleged intolerance with intolerance doesn’t make you less of a bigot. The mental ill-health statistics on the LGBTQIA population is appalling, something Wil’s detractors allegedly care about, yet they rejected and shamed him anyway. His detractors may sort of have a point though: I have in the past experienced transphobia in certain conservative circles and the like. I may seem very tolerant towards Wil’s detractor types and transphobic conservatives only because I desensitised to transphobia a long time ago. I think in my younger days I got offended so much that I eventually tapped out, leaving me to feel like seeking validation from within is enough. Either way, why do I bother with being openly trans and conservative?

The problem isn’t conservatism, the problem is reactionaryism. True conservatism is about preserving institutions and systems that work, upholding proven traditions and supporting organic change for the better. The father of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, wasn’t against change. He even supported free trade at a time when it was a controversial idea in his own electorate because he knew it was for the better good of his country. He was also a reluctant supporter of the American revolution, whilst decrying the French revolution, because he differentiated between change that reflected the organic state of society and change that aimed to turn society and its longstanding institutions on its head under a utopian fantasy.

Conservatism as a movement has long been shaped by people and things that aren’t conservative. Indeed, history, especially recent history, seems to show that genuinely principled conservatives on average have less influence on what passes for conservatism than populists and other manifestations of historical forces and trends.

Wil and I differed on what this means in practice, and other people will also disagree with me, but I’m okay with that, because I want to live in a civil society where different opinions can co-exist. What’s wrong with that? Let’s aim for that, because that’s the best way to honour Wil’s time in this world. Vale Wilson Gavin, the young man whose family “admired Wil’s drive to contribute, so often in ways not many knew about — like serving at a soup kitchen every Saturday or the year he spent teaching kids in Mongolia. He would regularly give the last note in his wallet to a homeless person on the street”. It’s better to live one day as a tiger than a thousand days as a sheep.