JUST as the rainbow flags are packed away and the relentless propaganda of Pride Month comes to an end, up pops Drag Queen Story Hour UK, a series of almost 70 events at council libraries across the country.
These are accompanied, inevitably, by a band of half-witted parents trumpeting their participation. I don’t want to be uncharitable, but they can be described only as useful idiots; facilitators of a cause they haven’t even begun to understand.
How else to read, for example, Stella Creasy’s recent celebratory tweet: ‘What a lovely afternoon with Drag Story Hour UK today with the wonderful Greta who put so much energy into story telling and entertaining local children – Proud too that Walthamstow a community that welcomes and celebrates pride with the Morris Gallery in this lovely way! 
’
It is foolish, in the first instance, to think that these events have anything to do with Pride. Of course, the Drag Queen Story Hour UK website attempts to make this link with its rainbow typeface and some outdated (March 2011) statistics about LGBT+.
To believe, however, that is some homespun, organic initiative, grown out of the gay rights movement, is to be naive. It is part of a political agenda to destabilise our children and it doesn’t take much digging to unearth its pernicious roots.
As with so many of the worst ideas inflicted on today’s society, and in particular our young people, the origins can be located in academia. There are a number of scholarly papers advocating for Drag Queen Story Hour, where the clear purpose of these events is ‘to queer’ our children.
As one such paper puts it: ‘We are guided by the following question: what might Drag Queen Story Hour offer educators as a way of bringing queer ways of knowing and being into the education of young children? “Queer”, in this context, does not mean “gay”. Rather, it means anything that doesn’t represent normalcy. “Queer” is . . . whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence.’
Why would educators wish to confuse our children in this way? Why would they wish our most vulnerable to have ‘an identity without an essence’? James Lindsay, in his New Discourses podcast on the infiltration of Queer Theory into our schools, says: ‘It’s a long-running project rooted in Marxist theory . . . the Marxists get to destabilise identity, they get to destabilise psychology and therefore they get politically groomable people that they can bring into a disaffected – dissatisfied and mentally ill – state that they can then manipulate into being revolutionary towards their cause.’
In a nutshell, if our children lack any sense of identity and are, at the same time, instilled with a sense of dissatisfaction, then they are ripe for political activism. If they have been schooled in neo-Marxist theories, it is for this ideology that they will agitate.
It is perhaps worth noting, at this point, that I am not necessarily ascribing these motives to the organisers of Drag Queen Story Hour UK. In fact, I’d be surprised if they were aware of this scholarship. My suspicion is that they belong in the same category as those parents who naively jump on the bandwagon. They are pawns for those with more sinister intentions.
Can the likes of Creasy be excused, then? Well, there still remains the question of basic common sense. Which parents in their right mind would put their children at the feet of a man dressed as a sexualised woman?
In an age where Sunday school teachers have to pass a DBS check and go through rigorous safeguarding training, why do these perverse book-reading events not ring even the tiniest alarm bell? Concerns about undermining childhood innocence and the blurring of boundaries should be instinctive when mixing children with men in drag.
For the right-minded, of course, the dangers are obvious. Parents for Education have described the process at work: ‘Children are exposed to “queerness” to destabilise their sense of self, to help them become free via a continually fluid state of sexual identity. Normative barriers that prevent the sexual abuse of children are framed as oppressing children’s sexuality, and arguments are made that children want, and can consent to sexual relations with adults.’
Again, I’m not questioning the motives of individual organisers or participants. I simply don’t know what their particular intentions are, but the big picture must be understood.
Shocking as they were, the words of Drag Queen Ms Sharon Le Grand at the National Theatre’s River Stage family festival were no surprise: ‘We need to teach our children to open their hearts, teach children to open their minds and to teach our children to open their legs.’ The parents who took their children to the show in June should not have expected anything else.
This is no accident. It has been crafted in academia and forced into classrooms and children’s libraries across our country. Promoted by malevolent forces, it is facilitated by useful, bandwagon-jumping fools. It is for the rest of us to push back, expose the reality and resist with whatever means are at our disposal.
It is encouraging that there have been protests against Drag Queen Story Hour in Reading and Bristol. I hope the discerning will continue to raise their voices, for it is not controversial to object to a drag queen in your child’s school or library. It is simple common sense.
