Drag Queens to 'Come Out' at Aussie Olympics

Aug. 24 -- Drag queens wearing original costumes from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert will recreate scenes from the film at the closing ceremony of the Olympics in Sydney.

Original clothes from the 1994 movie about drag queens in the Australian Outback (which won an Academy Award for costume design) will be worn by drag queens recruited from Sydney’s gay theater circuit.

Olympics Minister Michael Knight on Wednesday confirmed the Priscilla segment, which will be part of a tribute to other Australian movies.

Although other films to be featured have not been revealed, the list of internationally successful Australian films includes Babe, Crocodile Dundee, Strictly Ballroom and the Mad Max series.

Some Controversy

When organizers of Sydney’s Olympics decided to include drag queens in the Oct. 1 closing ceremony, the first open involvement of gays in an Olympic event, they knew it would ruffle feathers.

Australia is a nation that lives for sport, seeing in it traditional values that do not include open homosexuality among its sports stars.

The Olympics provide Australia, world champions in rugby and cricket, with a great opportunity to show the world what a healthy, outdoor, sporting lifestyle can achieve.

Now Sydney may also be remembered for being the Games in which the Olympic movement accepted homosexuals.

Church groups and far-right politicians say the inclusion of drag queens in the Olympic jamboree, no matter how indirectly, could make Sydney the “homosexual capital of the world.”

“This blatant condoning of a public homosexual display during the closing ceremony will not enhance the Olympic Games nor Australia as host to the Games,” said the Rev. Fred Niles, a New South Wales parliamentarian.

“Homosexual and lesbian behavior is not a true representation of Australian culture and lifestyle. Drag queens do not truly represent our great Aussie culture at all,” he said.