A Victory For Equal Access

For a few years, libraries across America have featured Drag Queen Story Hours for children. However, when actor Kirk Cameron asked to read his new children’s book at the Indianapolis Public Library’s main branch, he was turned down.

On Thursday, Breitbart reported what happened next:

“This was the largest event held at the library in its 137 years of existence,” Zac Bell with BRAVE Books, who is with the book’s publisher, commented. “The turnout was phenomenal! We were blown away.”

According to Bell, the Indianapolis Public Library “originally denied us the ability to book the reading. We sent them a letter that threatened legal action and they backed down.”

Meanwhile, Cameron and his publisher recently criticized libraries that will not allow a public reading of his book but offer “drag queen story hours” for children.

However, “No more will the family of faith be shut out from the public square!” Cameron wrote in a social media post Wednesday.

Kirk Cameron will be reading his book at New York’s Scarsdale Library on Friday.

This is what the event in Indianapolis looked like:

Thank you, Kirk Cameron and Brave Books for standing up for the rights of parents to have access to events that build up their children.

 

 

 

Taxpayer Money Gone Bad

On Thursday, Breitbart reported on an upcoming event at the taxpayer-funded Brooklyn Public Library.

The article reports:

The taxpayer-funded Brooklyn Public Library is set to host a drag queen makeup tutorial specifically intended for teenagers.

The event, called “Teen Time: The Art of Drag – Make-Up Tutorial,” is set to take place on July 16th, and will be hosted at the Brooklyn Heights Library. The description is brief, simply reading “Come join us at Brooklyn Heights in our new Teen Space to experience the art of Drag Make-Up with a tutorial led by Oliver Click!” The post includes tags such as “LGBTQ,” “teen time,” and “teens and young adults.”

I can think of much better ways to use the library to educate or entertain teenagers.

The article continues:

The makeup tutorial will be led by drag performer Oliver Click, a program director for Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH), an organization riddled with sex scandals. DQSH has brought multiple different sex offenders, including child sex predators, to read to children under the banner of tolerance and diversity.

The leftwing organization’s events were also sponsored by a man who was arrested on child pornography charges.

The Brooklyn Public Library has hosted several DQSH events.

If adults choose to go to Drag Queen events, I have no problem. However, we are creating the illusion that the lifestyle associated with the Drag Queen culture is a mainstream lifestyle. It is not. It is an alternative lifestyle and should be treated as such. If adults want to engage in this lifestyle, they are free to do so, but let’s not foist it on our children before they have the reasoning skills to evaluate it.

Trying To Change The Cultural Norm

Yesterday CNS News posted an article about the discussion of whether or not we should allow drag queen story hours at public libraries. Where does free speech end?

The article notes:

Before our days, no one could ever have thought that we would have decayed to the point that drag queens would be reading to our three-year-olds. However, we have reached that point of absurdity. The maximizers of liberty have decreed that all must be permitted even though an overwhelming majority inside the community does not desire these lewd performances.

In a democratic society, where the people are supposed to rule, how does this angry majority defend themselves against the Drag Queen Story Hours and similar things that happen in their communities?

The article continues:

For this reason, some say liberalism has failed because its inner dynamism has pushed unrestrained and disordered liberty beyond the limits needed for society to function properly. A social consensus around certain moral norms that used to filter excesses is crumbling and coming apart. A tiny minority can now tyrannize over others in the name of liberty gone awry.

The problem with liberalism is that its value-neutral public square easily becomes a value-free place where a Ten Commandments monument and a Satanist Baphomet statue share equal space. Sacred text and pornography are equally qualified as literature. There is no notion of a moral right and wrong, save that defined by the exercise of freedom. Except when it threatens the physical integrity of another, anything can and must be tolerated. We must recognize any absurd self-identification or pronoun.

The article notes that there is a solution to allowing a total lack of standards to rule:

The only way to fight today’s destructive moral relativism is to have recourse to a universal moral law based on human nature and not individual whims. There must be a return to a natural law discussion that elevates the debate beyond the field of personal opinions and whims.

That is to say, there is a natural moral law, which Saint Paul says, is inscribed on the hearts of all men whereby all might know by reason those moral precepts that define the good in life. This law’s general precept, from which all the others follow, is that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” This law is valid for all times and all people in all places.

This law is not limited to Christians, although the Church is its best guardian. Throughout history, it has provided that rock of moral stability that favored human prospering. It is hardly a novel invention since American law and English common law are rooted in natural law traditions. It is not too much to insist that we might return to our roots.

It’s time to bring back common sense and community standards.

Fighting Cultural Norms

I am definitely old. I grew up in the age of dinosaurs when all you had to do to decide which bathroom to use was check your pants. Men who dressed in women’s clothes were simply odd. There was no reason to harm them or look down on them, but they were simply not something you were interested in incorporating into the mainstream of society. They were certainly not something you felt it necessary to discuss with your elementary school child. Well, evidently there is a definite effort being made to change those cultural norms.

The Hill posted an article today about “Drag Queen Story Hour.” This is a relatively new phenomena where men in drag read children’s books to kids in libraries or bookstores. This seems really bizarre to me.

The article reports:

And a group called Common Sense Campaign Tea Party is also reportedly calling for a protest of an event this month at a public library in Mobile, Ala., it added.

“The program is designed to purposely target children so as to make sexual perversion acceptable through repeated exposure,” according to a poster on the group’s Facebook page, the AP reported.

Drag queen Khloe Kash is reportedly scheduled to visit Mobile and read “Rainbow Fish” and other children’s books, including “Stella Brings the Family,” about a little girl unsure what to do as Mother’s Day approaches because she has two fathers.

According to the news service, critics say that the program is meant to indoctrinate children into a progressive view of sexuality. Citing AL.com, it noted that opponents at a Mobile County Commission meeting described it as such. Those defending the event at a meeting reportedly sympathized with the critics, but pointed to the First Amendment.

So far, there are no plans to cancel “Drag Queen Story Hour” in Mobile, the AP noted.

Despite small pockets of opposition, the events are becoming more prevalent, Jonathan Hamilt, a New Yorker who helps organize the story hours across the U.S., told the news agency.

“It’s growing all over the nation, including the South,” Hamilt said.

I’m sorry. I just don’t think this is appropriate for young children. Can’t we just let them alone to be children for a while?