Since 2015, Drag Queen Story Hour, DQSH, has been offered at public libraries for children ages 3-11. Local Drag Queens dress in their regalia and read stories to children, ostensibly for the purpose of encouraging a love of reading, self-love, and respect for others different from themselves.
DQSH events are now being scheduled across the country. Australia and the UK have their own versions.
The DQSH founder in the US, Michele Tea, launched the initiative because she felt local libraries were “heteronormative.”
As another leader described it, “The program strives to “instill the imagination and play of gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.” In NYC, the purpose included being sure the queens could talk effectively about gender identity.
A Tennessee organizer said, “There is no hidden agenda or meaning behind it. We are not trying to breed drag kids.” But you’d be hard-pressed to believe that if you read DQSH’s own words.
Drag Queen Story Hour has its own website. They say its purpose “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real.”
Promoters of this immoral child sex abuse can be found in the mental health profession. One sex therapist said, “The real problem, as I see it, lies not in exposing children to the reality of diverse sexualities and gender identities—those who do not fit the typical definitions of masculinity or femininity—but rather not providing gender-nonconforming kids with other templates as they begin to sort out their feelings about who they authentically are.” For him, the real reason some people do not want these kinds of events to occur is simply their homophobia or misogyny, their desire to bully, or that somehow their masculinity is threatened. He believes Drag Queen costumes are no more harmful than Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and other Disney characters.
DQSH is unbelievable and offensive on the face of it, yet the events are being embraced by library directors and boards even in the face of sometime local opposition. One question is why do these professionals and boards believe this is necessary, appropriate, and good? Another greater question is why would parents send their little children to hear stories read by Drag Queens?
I do not hate Drag Queens or any other LGBTQ+ person. I don’t want to deny them jobs or their civil liberties as American citizens. I don’t endorse or support in any way the bullying and assaults some of them have at times endured. I don’t wish them ill and harm.
I do, however, strongly disagree with their moral choices regarding their lifestyle. The same way I disagree with heterosexuals who participate in affairs or adultery outside of marriage. In fact, I don’t believe one kind of sexual sin is any more egregious than any other kind of sexual sin. Sin is sin. Sexual sin is sexual sin.
I know the Church responded poorly to the early Gay Rights Movement, often with condemnation based upon truth but absent any love or offer of God’s forgiveness and reconciliation. But this does not change the moral truths taught in Scripture. LGBTQ lifestyle choices, Drag Queens included, are not something Christians who believe the Word of God can support much less promote.
Gender fluidity is a social construct, not biological sex. God created male and female (Genesis 1:26-27). There is no sexually, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically happy ending for LGBTQ lifestyles.
So, I see DQSH as a morally unwise, indeed immoral, development being foisted upon innocent little children incapable of processing any of it. Whatever the motive claimed, this is child abuse.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020
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