Parents Bring Their Children to Hear Drag Story Hour

Has anyone asked parents who bring their children to drag story hour if they worry about sexual confusion or "grooming." A parent who brings her child to this event says the crazy protestors are more upsetting than the men in drag.

I have trouble tracking the conservative logic. "Family" is supposed to be big it says. "Government influence that contradicts a family's 'values'" is bad. But when a family's values include learning from books read by men in drag it is time for the government to stop it. I suppose the case is made that men in drag in a public library is somehow the public sector indoctrinating children. The audience is there voluntarily. It doesn't seem anymore indoctrinating for men to appear as women than it does for women to wear bib overalls. I can't tell you how many local theater productions I have been to where women play male characters. That is done often if men, or the right men, do not try out for the roles. I've never seen a single word of protest or commentary of any kind about this common practice in theater. 

For decades the right has portrayed gay people, especially men, as intent on converting children to being gay for the purpose of molesting them. The only study using data found that most male child sex abusers live their lives as heterosexual males. This study was done with men in prison on charges of child sexual abuse. The study was done in the Midwest, in Kansas as I recall. There were criticisms of the study as there always are in the social sciences. It is difficult, for example, to conclude absolutely for certain a person's sexual orientation by asking them about it. Nevertheless, there is no study concluding that homosexual males are more likely to molest children than heterosexual males. The field that studies this considers attraction to children as entirely different than same-sex attraction.

 While some Christians claim men dressing in drag is sin or somehow against Christianity, that is not reason enough to stop the practice of drag men reading books to children. If parents do not bring their children in the Saturday morning event libraries will no doubt terminate the practice. When it remains popular with parents the religious right is violating its own holier-than-thou pronouncements about parents being in charge of teaching family values to their children. 

Teaching false cause and effect in the common practice on the political right. Hopefully libraries will continue to invite a diverse cross section of their communities to interact with children and that parents will continue to support this.