Churchill: Drag queen at a cat cafe? What’s the issue?

ROTTERDAM — At least one elected official in Rotterdam ought to acquaint himself with the Constitution, the First Amendment particularly. 

That official is Rotterdam Town Board member Joe Mastroianni, who took it upon himself to meddle with a drag queen story hour that was set to occur on the Pretty Paw Lounge Cat Cafe, a Mariaville Road business that’s equal elements espresso store, present retailer and feline adoption clinic.

Yes, it is an uncommon place. 

Here’s the deal: After Pretty Paw introduced the occasion, Mastroianni requested a city zoning official to look into it. The zoning officer, Joanne Schillaci, subsequently paid a go to to the cafe, and the proprietor of the business, a mannequin who goes by the title Rachel Anne, later steered that stress from the city led her to cancel the story hour. 

“Any additional data on the occasion cancellation will be directed to the city, who stopped by this afternoon to debate cancellation with us,” the cafe’s Facebook web page mentioned, including {that a} city official had suggested that the occasion be scrapped. “We are deeply saddened to be in the course of such circumstances and we’re doing all we are able to to stay compliant with our city and their calls for.”

The phrase calls for is noteworthy. It suggests the choice was something however voluntary. 

Now, Mastroianni in an announcement says he requested Schillaci to look into the occasion as a result of “any such leisure is for adults and grownup leisure is just not permitted in Rotterdam.”

That’s doubtful, if not downright dumb. For one factor, a person in sporting girls’s clothes is just not mechanically grownup leisure, as anybody who grew up watching “Bosom Buddies” reruns can attest. (My hand is raised.) “Mrs. Doubtfire” was a PG-13 rated movie. 

Meanwhile, to the extent that drag queen story hours are controversial, it’s exactly as a result of they’re meant as kids’s leisure. It beggars perception that Mastroianni, a former state Assembly candidate who has used Facebook to share Sept. 11 conspiracy theories, would not know what the occasion was about or concentrate on the raging tradition struggle. 

That debate, in fact, is essentially centered on whether or not drag queens studying to kids is suitable content material for public libraries. Since these areas are funded by taxpayers, elected officers and on a regular basis residents are free to wrangle over their programming, in the event that they so select.

But the Pretty Paw Lounge Cat Cafe is a personal business, which suggests the content material of its programming is none of Mastroianni’s business. Under city zoning, a restaurant is allowed to have readings and gatherings. And as famous by Andrew Waite of the Daily Gazette, no person in Rotterdam has appeared to care about different occasions on the cafe, together with ones throughout which households and pets can pose with Santa. 

A drag queen occasion would not actually be my cup of tea and it might or not be yours. But no person was going to drive both of us to attend the Pretty Paw studying. The individuals who would have attended would have accomplished so voluntarily, had obvious stress from the city not robbed them of the chance. 

If you are OK with that, then you definitely also needs to be agreeable to a world through which meddlesome city officers intervene with Bible readings, political discussions and another occasion that anyone, someplace may discover objectionable. You’re basically agreeing to scrap the First Amendment and this democracy factor we have got going. Freedom, in spite of everything, means permitting different folks’s freedom. 

I ought to point out that, as my colleague Paul Nelson reported, Schillaci was fired after her go to to Pretty Paw, a dismissal she is struggling to grasp. 

“I used to be doing my job, and that’s what the city of Rotterdam appointed me for,” mentioned Schillaci, who contends that Pretty Paw had canceled the drag queen occasion earlier than she arrived to speak about it. She says a Rotterdam police officer spoke with Rachel Anne earlier than she did. 

That’s much more alarming, suggesting that the business actually was pressured. 

And whereas it is not clear that Schillaci’s dismissal was associated to the Pretty Paw controversy, there ought to be little doubt that her go to on a board member’s behalf was solely inappropriate. Zoning officers ought to keep on with zoning and go away their noses out of content material — a distinction that appears misplaced on Mastroianni, who applauded the squelching of speech. 

“I respect your swift dealing with of this yesterday,” he wrote in an e-mail thanking Schillaci for her go to. “She publicly canceled the occasion, and (it’ll) not create controversy or require sources to handle. Great job.”

Somebody, please, present this man the Constitution.