By Hank Beckman -
Our libertarian friends at Reason magazine are afraid, very afraid, that concern over the sexualization of little kids will somehow do lasting damage to our Constitution.
Steven Greenhut wrote a few months ago about “drag queen story hours,” held by the Sacramento public library, where gay men dressed in drag read stories to little kids accompanied by their hipper-than-thou parents.
Greenhut’s article links to the web site dragqueenstoryhour.com which explains that the purpose of the readings is to expose youngsters to “glamorous, positive and unabashedly queer role models.”
The opening page of the site shows a young girl staring curiously at a drag queen while her mother looks on adoringly. The girl looks to be about four or five years old. (At least she wears a dress and appears to be a girl and the woman appears to be a woman and her mother; one never knows in our brave, new gender-fluid world)
The site also helpfully provides links to organizations around the U.S. and the world where anyone interested can get in contact with local drag queens. As the lengthy list indicates, these organizations are indeed flourishing.
Greenhut relates how the story came to be national news because of a dustup between New York Post editorial writer, Sohrab Ahmari and David French of National Review Online.
The debate featured Ahmari calling for local ordinances against the practice and congressional hearings; he pointed out that in some of the same drag queen story hours in England, young children were actually taught how to “twerk,” which I gather is the modern term for what used to be called bumping and grinding.
French pointed out the relatively few story hours in the United State—apparently he hasn’t seen the web site—and urged us to protect the constitutional right of the drag queens to propagandize and sexualize children, some of whom appear to be pre-school age. He added that the story hours didn’t constitute a “cultural crisis.”
You can watch the debate on Youtube and decide for yourself who got the better of the argument. It’s obvious that Greenhut sides with French, pointing out that many locales would simply refuse to enact legislation against the story hours and downplaying whatever negative effects they might have on children.
Set aside the constitutional debate for for another day; lawyers and advocates on both sides can argue about the issue until people get sick of it, racking up billable hours and Internet clicks along the way.
Let’s focus instead on how we can better serve Mr. French’s desire to protect what he calls “viewpoint neutral access to public facilities.”
Maybe we should encourage those running our libraries—public employees running public institutions, mind you—that in this modern, “woke” age they should turn their attention to other people that need to have their constitutional rights protected.
Other marginal activities, long-frowned upon in polite society, desperately need to have their images spruced up a little. The profession of erotic dancing comes to mind as one that could use a little glamour.
True, strippers are no longer exclusively tired, beat-looking women plying their trade in seedy dumps for drunken losers who couldn’t get the attention of decent women with a two-by-four; in the modern age we have “gentleman’s clubs” that are all the rage. We read about celebrities and famous athletes visiting these establishments in limousines, swilling expensive champagne as they enjoy the shows. Very upscale and considered by the modern sophisticate to be every bit as normal as the neighborhood pub.
Still, there might be children out there who have yet to get the message about just how fulfilling a career in pole—dancing might be. In an era where street hookers have morphed into sex workers, popular culture portrays every sexual activity imagined, and the Internet is a virtual catalogue of sexual depravity, why shouldn’t we expose our six-year-olds to the glamour of taking their clothes off for money?
Libraries could hire professional dancers to supplement their incomes by instructing children in the fine art of twerking, when to bump and when to grind, and the latest trends in erotic facial expressions designed to peak the interest of the middle-age male.
And why not go a little further and make the pole dancing exhibitions interactive? We could let the little girls attending dress up in stripper attire—pasties, high heels and G-strings—and actually practice the various moves needed to be a proficient erotic dancer. Maybe even have a few middle-aged men in business suits, reeking of booze, make the experience realistic by sticking ten-dollar bills in the dancer’s little G-strings. Sounds like a plan, right?
Of course, my idea for adding a little glamour to the noble profession of stripping could run into a glitch or two.
The same people who get a warm, politically correct glow from the thought of sexualizing little boys and glamorizing the gay lifestyle might not be so eager to take a similar approach with their female children. The same liberal parents who wouldn’t bat an eye at interactive drag queen story hours might have a different opinion about exposing their little girls to what is, after all, an activity aimed at the heterosexual community.
Or would they? Is it possible that large segments of this society have become so depraved, have sunk so far into a decadent sewer, that there would actually be many parents supporting instructing their little girls in the stripper lifestyle?
Oh, it’s possible. Twenty-five years ago anyone suggesting that gay people should have the right to marry, transgender men would be competing in women’s sporting events, and Democrats would be introducing legislation to protect criminal illegals—the New Way Forward Act—would have been considered prime candidates for the booby hatch.
And if you agree with David French or think that my scenario about teaching little kids erotic dancing wouldn’t really be so bad, you really need to think about yourself.
