Commentary
For years, Canadians have proved amenable to demands for basic rights, but also to entitlements, for those who identify, variously, as “trans,” “non-binary” or “queer.” These entitlements, even those encroaching on women’s rights, are supported by government and most media. They extend into all our cultural, therapeutic, and social institutions.
The only domain in which we are witnessing a groundswell of citizen resistance is K–12 pedagogy, where Queer Theory—a gendered form of Marxism that rejects the “normal” in sexuality, including the notion of childhood “innocence”—is systematically imposed on vulnerable minds, with or without parental consent. Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) has become the cynosure of parental disquiet.
A recent video clip of naked Pride marchers chanting “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children” went viral. LGBTQ spin doctors claimed the words were “taken out of context.” Which begs the question of why male drag queens no longer stay in their lane of adult entertainment. What acceptable “context” encourages teaching children to “twerk” (“you just move your bum up and down like that”)—an action simulating sexual intercourse?
A majority of Canadians feel such organized sexualized messaging to young children is a bridge too far. They no longer believe DQSH is “family-friendly” or pure “entertainment.” Some are calling it out for what it is: “grooming,” building children’s trust in men with an agenda that goes far beyond teaching about “diversity.” They are saying so in protests against such events as a four-day drag theatre camp in B.C.
In a news report, a progressive journalist deplored this surge of opposition, in particular some protesters’ use of the word “groomer” as a “homophobic” trope, which, the journalist writes, “advocates say was used to vilify the LGBTQ2+ community in the 1970s and 1980s.” It is true that a vocal subset of gays were vilified in the 1970s and 1980s. A little research, though, would have uncovered information that might have tempered the journalist’s indignation.
In 1969 the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), a special interest group that advocated for abrogation of the age of sexual consent, became the first LGBT organization in Scotland, branding gay rights activism and child abuse lobbying as closely entwined goals there. From 1974 to 1984, PIE openly campaigned throughout the United Kingdom to normalize pedophilia as a legally and culturally acceptable practice. Such were the sexually freewheeling times, they were taken seriously at elite levels, even winning support from then Labour Health Minister Patricia Hewitt for such policies as reducing the age of consent to 10, and the decriminalization of incest. PIE activists were tactically sophisticated in their networking, branding pedophiles as an oppressed sexual minority, just like gays and lesbians.
Here, PIE’s alter ego is the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), still nominally active, although radically diminished in numbers. Still, as late as 2005, one lawyer dubbed it “a trade school for pedophiles.” In the ’70s, NAMBLA attracted support from prominent gays, such as beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and was affiliated with the International Lesbian and Gay Association until 1994. Finally, the Human Rights Campaign, which would become the biggest LGBT advocacy group in the United States, declared, “NAMBLA is not a gay organization … and we thoroughly reject their efforts to insinuate that pedophilia is an issue related to gay and lesbian civil rights.”
Nevertheless, NAMBLA’s website states that, true to its philosophy, its goal remains “to end the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships” by “educating the general public on the benevolent nature of man/boy love” through “cooperat[ion] with lesbian, gay, feminist, and other liberation movements.” The general public should not be expected to parse the distinction between “not a gay organization” and “cooperating with lesbian, gay … movements.” When the only people publicly promoting pedophilia self-identify as gay, the fact that they are a subset of LGB, and not the norm, might be lost on ordinary people.
A 1983 interview of two PIE representatives on Newsnight offers an insight into the creepiness of their strategy. They didn’t say they were campaigning for the right of 50-year old men to have sex with seven-year-olds. They talked about children’s right to sexual liberation. Challenged to admit that sex is “shocking” to a child, one of the men says, “Not if they’re properly educated…”
“Properly educated.” Today, under the rubric of Queer Theory—which does not recognize any boundaries of traditional sexual morality, decency, or age-appropriateness—that would be exposure of children, against the wishes of many parents, but with the blessing of pedagogical elites, to what used to be known as porn, such as the graphic memoir, “Gender Queer.”
And of course, defended as “education” about gender diversity and inclusion, children’s continual interaction with drag queens. Amongst the drag queens touring schools and libraries, a small but repulsive roster of sex offenders has been exposed. Alarm bells are ringing, and not just for conservatives. Rational gays and lesbians—LGB—feel tainted by the obsession with children inherent to Queer Theory. It’s noteworthy that no queer theorist of influence has ever condemned the acting out of pedophilic desire. Thus, the laudable (but alas, so far marginal) organization “Gays Against Groomers” was formed to counter the damage Queer Theory is inflicting on the LGB’s hard-earned brand of unthreatening normalcy.
DQSH’s agenda is laid out in a January 2021 paper published in the journal Curriculum Inquiry, titled “Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer imagination in early childhood,” co-authored by media studies doctoral candidate and drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess (of “swish swish swish” fame) and trans-identified queer theorist Harper Keenan.
The authors acknowledge that DQSH is meant not only as a model for learning “about queer lives,” but also “how to live queerly.” They write, “The future is queerness’s domain. … The here and now is a prison house.” (Translation: The traditional family home is a prison for children.) And, notably, “It may be that DQSH is ‘family friendly,’ in the sense that it is accessible and inviting to families with children, but it is less a sanitizing force than it is a preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship.” (Translation: We are your children’s new family.)
For readers who seek a fully informed, in-depth unpacking of this frank and revelatory journal article, I recommend a seminar with indispensable cultural Marxism expert James Lindsay via his New Discourses podcast episode, “Groomer School 4: Drag Queen Story Hour.”
Forget about “context.” When they say, “we’re coming for your children,” believe them.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
