The average, bona fide reader probably swallowed his Rice Krispies the wrong way a few days ago when he read that there had been a scuffle in Sainte-Catherine in front of a municipal library.1about the tale presented to children.
Or rather about the identity of the reader of the tale: Sébastien Potvin, alias Barbada, his drag queen character.
There has been this fashion for a few years of drag queens who read children’s stories in libraries or in schools in North America. In Quebec, Barbada is one of the most prominent drag queens.
Catching his breath, this reader having swallowed his Rice Krispies the wrong way will say to himself: Hey, are drag queens controversial?
Yes. Even some people are very scared of drag queens.
(Imagine: being afraid of a man dressed as a flamboyant woman…)
It’s the far right that has an unhealthy fixation on drag queens, lending them the magical power (hyperbole alert, here) to gender-convert children and even groom them to be sex toys. for adults, what is called grooming.
The far right sees grooming everywhere… on the left. And needless to say, what’s to the left of the far right is a broad spectrum.
From Bill Gates to drag queens to Hollywood and Joe Biden, they see groomers everywhere among their political and cultural enemies. Yes, that sounds like the same rhetoric as QAnon and his paranoia of a world secretly dominated by pedophile cabals. Same followers, too…
Fox News and the conservative networks to its right, the whole constellation of Republican disinformation sites made in USA and hordes of elected Republicans repeat all day long in the United States that drag queens are an existential threat to children, a subtle operation of the Left-Woke-Communisse to pervert the children of the Nation…
Result: since the beginning of 20232, 32 bills have been introduced in US legislatures to ban drag queen shows. In Tennessee, we want to ban them if they are visible to children and in Texas, we want to put them in the same category as porn cinemas.
Abortion has historically been THE major mobilizing issue for the American right. The fight against abortion has allowed Republicans for 50 years to rely on the militant energies and political contributions of millions of Americans…
Half a century later, these people won: the Supreme Court torpedoed the constitutional guarantees on abortion.
But that’s not the end of anything: having become a far-right party under Trump’s poison, the Republican Party wants to push its fight even further against what would endanger the foundation of a healthy society, I named the Family, a Family being as everyone knows composed of a man, a woman (who stays in her place) and a maximum of children (to be educated, preferably, at home)…
From where this cultural and political war with all that would threaten this Family, for a few years. Like everything that comes together under the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag.
It gives Florida and its ban on even talking about homosexuality in the classroom, threats of criminalization against doctors willing to counsel teenagers who have doubts about their gender identity and, yes, the stigmatization of reading the tale to children by drag queens.
The fanatics who demonstrated against the drag queen Barbada in Sainte-Catherine, PQ, only aped – one of their great talents – the Americans who multiply the demonstrations in front of public libraries3armed with their AR-15 to “protect” the children from the drag danger…
(Memo to these folks: In arenas, schools and churches, there are statistically and historically more pedophiles per square foot than in public libraries where a drag queen reads The three little pigs children under the eyes of their parents.)
Ultimately, this politically fabricated hysteria that equates anything non-straight with pedophilia suggests that it’s OK to stigmatize “others,” from trans to gay to drag queens…
It has nothing to do with children.
It has everything to do with the application of a moral varnish on this good old hatred which only changes its habit, according to the times…
What is ironic is that the radicalized people who yesterday believed that the mask was the sign of global dictatorship and who today believe that the cure for the pedophile cabal is the banning of drag queens are still there to bathe us on the importance of libaaaaaarté. Ah, freedom, how they love freedom…
It’s easy though…
If you’re against gay marriage, don’t marry a gay man.
If you’re against abortion, don’t get an abortion. And if you’re a man, it’s none of your business.
And if you’re against drag queen story time, well, don’t sign your child up for drag queen story time at the local library.
That’s freedom.
But for the far right, freedom is just a catchphrase to sweat those they deem too different to be accepted.