A Small Texas City Gets a Drag-Queen Parade for Christmas

My wife and I moved to Taylor, about 35 miles northeast of Austin, to raise our three children in a community dedicated to protecting children and supporting families. Historically a farming and rail town, Taylor is about as far from the front lines of the culture war as it is possible to imagine. Last year an organization called Taylor Pride submitted an innocuous-sounding application to sponsor a parade float featuring “a rainbow Christmas tree” and “probably 10-15 adults.” The Taylor Area Ministerial Alliance granted approval immediately. Evidently no one at the church group—which “exists to unite the Christian ministers of the Taylor area in fellowship and to enrich the spiritual life of the community through united ministry and evangelistic outreach”—realized that Taylor Pride was the town’s “hub of the LGBTQ community.” The ministers naively thought a group calling itself Taylor Pride was simply proud to be from Taylor.

That’s life in a small town. But if the members of the parade committee were quaintly unfamiliar with the vernacular of modern identity politics, they for sure weren’t prepared for what happened next. Taylor Pride was planning something slightly more adult than a rainbow Christmas tree. Its parade float featured drag queens—men dressed as busty women in short skirts.

Unsurprisingly, parade-goers grumbled that this wasn’t the sort of thing they expected from a small-town Christmas parade organized by churches and aimed at families. To ensure it didn’t happen again, the Taylor Area Ministerial Alliance decided to change the wording on this year’s application to make clear that Christmas parade floats mustn’t contradict “traditional and biblical family values.” Taylor Pride interpreted the rules to mean it wouldn’t be allowed to sponsor a float this year, so it complained to the staff in City Hall about the application’s “exclusionary” language.

I’m a father, a Christian, and a Taylor resident. I followed the parade flap closely for those reasons. But I’m also a political scientist, so for me this is where the story really gets interesting. Without public notice or deliberation, and without consulting the Taylor City Council, the elected representatives of the people, the professional staff at City Hall created a new event—a second parade to be held on the same night immediately following the traditional parade.

I emailed the city’s clerk, communications director and manager of events to ask who made the decision to create the new parade and what the process was for doing so. Communications director

Stacey Osborne

replied that they acted on their own authority. Taylor’s part-time five-member City Council so far hasn’t weighed in on the flap. It has a habit of rubber-stamping staff recommendations.

This is a problem with roots that go deep into American history. Beginning in the Progressive Era, citizens increasingly farmed out local decision-making to experts and professionals. This happened in part because of an emerging cult of expertise but also because high levels of social cohesion made it reasonably safe to trust permanent staff to reflect the values of the town. Eventually, most of the important decisions about the way cities and small towns work were handed off to “experts” and Americans became less a self-governing people.

There is now a yawning ideological gap between the people who live in American towns and the professionalized cadre of city staff who pass through those towns on their way up the career ladder. Those on the professional municipal management career track often see small towns like Taylor as the first step in a climb toward bigger cities with larger budgets and fatter staff salaries. The bigger the city, the more likely it is to be progressive. Thus, small towns with city staffers on the make are often governed by bureaucrats who work with an eye to what will please not the town they work for, but the big city they want to work for.

Professional bureaucrats run small towns such as Taylor like ideological colonizers. They should behave more like hired hands doing the work the people have assigned them through democratic deliberation. Subject-matter experts have something to contribute to the running of modern towns and cities, but the preponderance of experts has created a marked democratic deficit. That deficit is now a grave threat to the vitality of American civic life.

Some fault lies with the residents of towns like Taylor. By ceding too much political power to officials they can’t trust, they’ve allowed a civic culture that doesn’t match their values to take hold. When they finally have to stand against the dictates of the experts, too many citizens these days discover that their self-governance muscles have atrophied. They are intimidated and cowed by unelected officials who tell them that they lack specialized knowledge, that progressive political change is inevitable, and that they can’t do anything about any of it.

As Ms. Osborne told me in an email: “City Management, who has the administrative authority to handle the day to day activities for the City of Taylor, made the decision to create the new parade. It was not discussed in a council meeting and there was no council vote, although Council was notified of the decision.”

The new parade ran right behind the traditional parade on Dec. 3. It featured even more drag performers than last year, including one called Sedonya Face. Most of the floats were sponsored by Taylor Pride and city employees. National media outlets descended on Taylor, pumping out stories implying that local residents are bigots and tying what happened here to events like November’s mass shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo.

These civic and cultural battles are sure to become more frequent and more intense. For those who simply want to work, worship God and raise their families in peace, this news is unwelcome. I sympathize. But communities can’t remain strong if they are unwilling to defend common sense and get involved in the political process. Politics can’t be left to the experts.

Mr. Stuart is assistant professor of political science at the University of St. Thomas and a founding member of Strong Families of Taylor.