Culture
Posted by Charlie Kirk Staff - 10.31.22

Drag Shows Meant to 'Sexualize' Children Have Become Midterm Election Issue

Drag Shows Meant to 'Sexualize' Children Have Become Midterm Election Issue

Culture
Posted by Charlie Kirk Staff - 10.31.22

While shows featuring drag queens have been around for decades, the recent effort on the left to introduce them to children has become a major midterm election issue, a report noted on Saturday.

Conservatives especially feel like the left’s efforts to bring more of those shows — typically featuring men dressing as women — to kids is improperly sexualizing them while being overly focused on gender-bending issues. Examples include “Drag Queen Story Hour” and drag shows promoters claim are “family friendly.”

“This is a quite explicit effort to sexualize younger and younger children,” Dr. Jay Richards, director of the DeVos Center at the Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The outlet adds:

Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio had a spat with a drag queen who goes by Lil Miss Hot Mess earlier this month after including footage of the performer reading to an audience of young children in full drag costume in a campaign video that suggested the event was aimed at indoctrinating children. Lil Miss Hot Mess accused Rubio of bigotry in an ad published by the LGBT activist group GLAAD.

“Why are you so obsessed with me and Drag Story Hour? We’re simply out here reading books to children, encouraging them to use their imagination to envision a more just and fabulous world,” the performer noted in the post. “We could be addressing the devastating impacts of climate change, the devastating epidemic of gun violence in our schools, the devastating economy that isn’t working for working people.”

Several other GOP candidates have made drag shows for kids a campaign issue, including Arizona gubernatorial contender Kari Lake, who recently noted that the left “kicked God out of schools and welcomed the Drag Queens.”

Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has also been criticized for funding drag performances via the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, which is part of the state Department of Commerce. Kelly has denied the accusations, but materials promoting some performances contained a Kansas Department of Commerce logo, per KSN.com.

Derek Schmidt, the Kansas attorney general and a GOP gubernatorial candidate, blamed the current governor for the shows.

“Gov. Kelly has been telling Kansas for months now that she’s in the middle of the road. Well, supporting and funding drag shows for kids of all ages is not middle of the road,” he said Monday.

“If you elect me as your governor, I commit that my administration will put a stop to using your hard-earned money and our state’s good name to sponsor or promote sexually suggestive or explicit programming – especially to children,” he noted further on Twitter.

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