I don’t blame you for not being up on the very latest from Broadway, that gayest of entertainment venues.  And I’ll admit that I’m not about to enrich your cultural life by bringing you up to speed.  Unfortunately, however, this has broader implications.

I write of Kinky Boots, the current Tony-winning Broadway smash about a transvestite with a heart of gold and the factory men who learn to love him/her/it.

Kinky Boots started off as a British film “based on a true story.”  It’s a classic, heartwarming tale: Son saves failing family factory by switching production from traditional men’s shoes to thigh-high rubber stilettos designed to fit fellas who like to wear miniskirts and fake boobs.  The market has spoken, and it says fabulous!

The “true story” isn’t as heartwarming.  Steve Pateman of W.J. Brooks & Co., in the shoemaking village of Earls Barton, Northamptonshire, did indeed convert his four-generation family business (employing 80 workers) into a drag-queen supplier, after orders for regular footwear plummeted thanks to a market flooded by cheap shoes from China.  But the crocodile rock only lasted for two years, because—hang on to your seat—those crafty Chinese slavers got wind of Pateman’s success in this unsavory niche market and flooded it as well.

Pateman is now a fireman.

But his PVC heels live on, thanks to the inspired work of 80’s pop star and 10’s fag hag Cyndi Lauper, who wrote the libretto and composed the music for a Broadway musical drawn from the aforementioned film.

Kinky centers on a fictitious character named Lola, an ass-kicking transvestite who saves the factory from bankruptcy and its foreman from homophobia, while singing such endearing lines as “I’m Black Jesus, I’m Black Mary / But this Mary’s legs are hairy.”

As the Holiday Season rolled around, the powers that be who make TV decided that America needed to get Kinky.  CBS This Morning gushed over Tony winner Billy Porter (Lola), whose battle with inner demons is so obviously relatable to the average American.  “From the outside, Billy Porter appeared to be soaring,” the segment notes of the actor’s early achievement of starring in a Broadway revival of Grease.  “But at the height of success, he walked away from it and quit the business.”  Porter attributes this crisis of conscience to homophobic stereotyping—looking like “a clown” on stage while being forced to wear “14 inches of orange rubber hair and a space suit.”  Leaving the theater, Porter went on “what he calls ‘a journey for truth.’  It’s a fight he waged before—growing up gay in a devoutly religious community in Pittsburgh.”

Obviously, rejection by the “devoutly religious community” is an unbearable burden.  Such religion is unacceptable in a society free of bigotry.  The acceptable god, on the other hand, will rescue you from your Christianity-induced depression and the shame of wearing rubber hair and a spacesuit by giving you a role as a drag queen.  “It’s grace,” Porter told CBS.  “You know, God has plans for you and dreams for you that you can’t ever imagine having for yourself.”

Those dreams led right to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, where children bundled up in Manhattan or watching NBC’s live coverage at home were treated to a performance by Porter and a gang of trannies in lingerie and heels who, in the words of Matt Lauer, can show us how to “celebrate the differences in each other.”

Now it’s no surprise that some parents, whose children may have been expecting nothing more than giant cartoon balloons and Santa Claus, were offended by this performance.  Many Americans in flyover country aren’t interested, it turns out, in their kids learning about what it means to be “kinky,” let alone watching a dozen Dr. Frankenfurters strutting their stuff while the turkey bakes in the kitchen.

The real kick in the pants, however, came from the left-wing media’s reaction to normal parents’ offense.  The Huffington Post dismissed the outrage as nothing more than the product of the extreme religious right (you know, that same group that caused Lola/Billy’s depression).  “Although the show’s message is of acceptance and tolerance and the performance was relatively tame . . . right wingers across America took to social networks to voice their outrage at NBC for broadcasting it.”  A writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “Momania” blog admitted being irritated at first by the spectacle, only to warm up to the sodomitic perversion on display when it provided a teachable moment for her child: “By the end of the performance she decided it was good for people to feel better about themselves and if that was what it took then she was OK with that.”

So we have to stain our brains with an awareness of Kinky Boots because it tells us what the dominant culture expects of the rest of us in the year to come.  Americans had gay marriage shoved down our throats until enough of us stopped regurgitating.  Now we are being treated to dancing transvestites who are here to teach our children the meaning of love.