The Religious Embodiments of Drag Sethlas: Blasphemous Popular Art and the Religious/Secular Divide Before the Spanish Court

Abstract

In this chapter, I raise the question of why at present the use of (Roman) Catholic religious scenes, imagery, or ritual by female and queer artists (such as, among others, Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Conchita Wurst) seems particularly prone to provoke accusations of blasphemy from both religious leaders and civil authorities in Western countries. This is even the case in countries where the penal code hardly acknowledges this behaviour as an actual crime anymore. To discuss this state of affairs, I will analyse the case of Drag Sethlas, prosecuted by the Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers for her/his winning show in the Drag Queen Gala in the carnival period in Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria in 2017. In this performance, Sethlas adopted the alternating roles of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ and engaged with both in erotic fantasies. After 18 months, he was acquitted of ‘crimes against religious sentiment’; the argument centred on the event taking place in the carnival period, which was seen by the Spanish Court as an originally ‘pagan’ feast with a provocative and transgressive setting. The controversy generated by the interplay of provocative sexual and well-known religious themes in this act is suggestive of the interrelation of religious, sexual, and ethnic identities and of the public fights over them in modern societies. Openly combined ‘feminised’ religion and sexual diversity, while intending to adopt critical feminist and LGBTQ stances, are potentially transgressive in multifaceted ways and run the risk of being accused of offence, insult, and defamation, not only by conservative religious groups and leaders, but also by secular politicians and civil authorities.