Some Pride Night promotions pass without incident. The Baltimore Orioles invited Heidi N Closet, a RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant whose legal name is Trevien Anthonie Cheek and who appeared in the 2024 Tubi horror-comedy film Slay, to host the “Bird Bath,” the team’s interactive water-themed family zone in sections 84 and 86 of the left-field bleachers at Camden Yards, for Thursday’s game against the Washington Nationals. They are now reading the coverage.
According to Breitbart, many fans accused the Orioles of “grooming” young children by placing a drag queen in the family section of the stadium. The word “grooming” refers to the specific process by which predators cultivate access to children for the purpose of abuse. It is a clinical and legal term with a precise meaning. It is being applied here to the presence of a drag queen at a water splash zone, which requires either a belief that the two things are equivalent or a decision to use the word without that belief, because the word produces the response that the accurate description of the situation would not.
The Orioles are 41-38. The Bird Bath is a feature of Camden Yards that has operated for multiple seasons as a family-friendly interactive zone where children play in water. The decision to book Heidi N Closet to host it for Pride Night has produced more media coverage than the team’s winning percentage and more Breitbart traffic than any of their games this season, which is either an unintended consequence of the booking or exactly the calculation the Orioles made about what Pride Night requires in 2026, depending on how generously you read their communications department.
Heidi N Closet has performed on multiple seasons of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and appeared in a horror-comedy on Tubi, which is the streaming service whose slogan is “movies are free here,” which is not a credential that typically precedes a “grooming” accusation but which is the context in which Thursday’s Bird Bath host arrived at Camden Yards. The Orioles have not issued a statement. Heidi N Closet has not commented. The Bird Bath was wet.
The coverage will last longer than the game did.
When a drag queen hosting a water splash zone at a baseball stadium produces the word grooming in coverage, what exactly has the word been asked to carry that it was not designed for?
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