Introduction

Over the last several years, violence against The LGBTQ community has been on the rise in America and abroad. Conservative groups such as A Million Moms, Moms For Liberty, The Proud Boys, and others have engaged in sustained efforts to disrupt and ban events like Drag Story Time and family-friendly drag shows.

Conservative groups and have also tried banning books containing LGBTQ+ characters or content under the tired and false claim that the LGBTQ+ community is trying to groom children and reading about/seeing queer people will “make kids gay.” And when local communities push back against these efforts, instead of conceding to the will of the people, these groups double down, increasingly showing up armed.

When libraries refuse to remove LGBTQ+ books or cancel Drag Story Time, they often face criticism from these groups and others, up to and including efforts to defund said libraries, as in Jamestown Township, a small community in the western part of Michigan, my home state.

But these groups haven’t acted alone. Politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have repeatedly said and tweeted anti LGBTQ+ things. And on the local level, politicians and council members have sought to limit or outright ban Drag Story Time and any book with LGBTQ+ content, claiming they violate obscenity and decency laws.

But they aren’t alone. The media gets in on this gay hate agenda too.

Conservative commenters like Tucker Carlson have gone on air spewing anti-trans lies about how liberals what sex ed taught to kindergarteners or want to take away parents’ rights regarding whether their trans children take hormone blockers or get gender confirmation surgery.

And when people like JK Rowling and Helena Bonham Carter or other celebrities say, do, or post transphobic things or boost anti-trans comments and voices, reporters often don’t point out the misinformation and lies.

 Instead, they frame the story as a debate.

The problem with this is it gives legitimacy to this gay hate agenda. When it comes to human rights—yes, trans rights are human rights—there is no debate when one side believes the other side shouldn’t exist.

All of this hate hurled toward the trans and queer communities reached a critical point last November when an assailant entered Club Q; the only LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, CO; armed with an AR-15 and opened fire, killing five and injuring twenty-five.  

And more recently police arrested a man in Florida for threatening to kill 100 LGBTQ+ students at Florida State University. He claimed, “It was a joke.”

Running through all this is a unifying thread, the belief in the so-called gay agenda; that the LGBTQ+ community here and elsewhere want to “turn people queer,” by indoctrinating children, and grooming them for sexual assault.  

This is false.

Studies show 80-90% of all known child sex offenders are cis males. Child sex abuse statistics also show that almost one-third of  children are assaulted by a family member. For children under the age of six, 50% of the abusers are someone in the family. For victims aged 12 to 17 the percentage drops to 23%. Stats also point to no tangible link between homosexuality and pedophilia, despite some assertions (Darkness to Light).

So no, random LGBTQ+ folks aren’t the ones you need to look out for. It’s your friends and family. The simple fact is Carlson et al. are fear mongering and pushing their gay hate agenda.

Textbook Hypocrisy

First, learning about, reading and seeing LGBTQ+ people doesn’t sexualize children any more than learning about straight folks does. And the hypocrisy of A Million Moms et al. with this is appalling. They have no issue with depictions of straight couples in 99.999% of the media, but let there be a same-sex couple or a same-sex kiss on screen and they lose their minds.

Yet these are some of the same people who have no problem with things like child beauty pageants, or insinuating kindergarteners are in romantic relationships with each other, if said couple is straight. They are also the ones who often complain about having the gay agenda shoved down their throats, yet have no issues pushing their views on others re: religion, which brings me to my next point.

These people try to mask their bigotry behind religion, yet they pick and choose which parts of the Bible to follow. I’m reminded of the scene from West Wing where President Bartlet and conservative commenter Dr. Jenna Jacobs get into an argument about homosexuality and the Bible. President Bartlet points out all the other laws in Leviticus and elsewhere that Christians like Dr. Jacobs ignore while zeroing in on Lev 18:22 to further their gay hate agenda.

Such laws prohibit wearing clothes of blended fabrics; eating shellfish, pork, or any animal with cloven feet; or marking your body (Lev 19:19, Lev 1:1-47, Lev 19:28). The Bible also establishes the criteria for who you can enslave and for how long, such as selling your daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7).

The excuse given for this is that Jesus changed things with his death and resurrection. However, Jesus is quoting multiple times throughout the News Testament saying Old Testament Law still applies (Matthew 5:17-20).

Yet, they completely ignore everything Jesus said about helping the stranger and, the least among you, not pushing your religion on others, the beatitudes, and being overly pious for show (Matthew 5-7).

But even if their interpretation of The Bible is right, it doesn’t matter.

 Because The US and most other Western countries are in fact secular nations, so no religion can force their views on non-believers.

We Are a Secular Nation

 “…Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”—The First Amendment.

The entire point of the 1^st Amendment was to prohibit the government from telling its citizens what they could say, what they could write, who they associate with, and who and how they could worship. Thus, Madison et al. added the establishment clause, and why Jefferson wrote in a letter to the Danbury Baptists Association that:

“…Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

And it’s this fundamental misunderstanding of the 1^st amendment regarding religion and free speech that is at the core of the gay hate agenda. They believe their interpretation of their religion should take precedence.

No.

 You have a right to your views, but you don’t have a right to force them on others. If you don’t want your children to read books with gay or trans characters, go to Drag Story Time, or a family-friendly drag shows, then don’t take them. But you don’t get to take that choice away from others, especially when these stories give many kids the representation they desperately need.

Representation Matters

Whether it’s politicians pushing bills to ban trans youth from using the bathroom that comports with their gender identity, or draconian laws that would ban trans athletes from participating in sports and subject them and others to inspections of their genitalia from adult strangers if someone suspects them of being trans, to the above efforts to ban books with LGBTQ+ content; at every turn, the adults claiming to care about the welfare of children are the same one demonizing them if they aren’t cis and heterosexual.

So many LGBTQ+ kids feel unseen and not worthy of love, respect, and dignity because their communities send them the message, they are wrong, confused, don’t know they’re LGBTQ+; and even if they do, their lives don’t matter.

Therefore, healthy, three-dimensional depictions of queer folks are important. Not just for queer kids and teens, but for everyone else.  

Facts and Figures

Studies have shown reading books increases empathy and emotional intelligence, and that reading about characters from marginalized communities increases empathy toward those communities.

Studies have also shown seeing positive depictions of LGBTQ+ people helps kids come to terms with their gender identity and sexuality sooner. This is the reason there appears to me more LGBTQ+ people now. Because they feel more comfortable coming out and doing it sooner because it’s less stigmatized now. And not because the queer community is “turning people gay.”

Per the Mayo Clinic’s website:

“Most children between ages 18 and 24 months can recognize and label gender groups. They may identify others as girls, women or feminine. Or they may label others as boys, men or masculine. Most also label their own gender by the time they reach age 3.

However, society tends to have a narrow view of gender. As a result, some children learn to behave in ways that may not reflect their gender identity. At age 5 or 6, most children are rigid about gender and preferences. These feelings tend to become more flexible with age.”

And per a medicinenet.com article:

“In a 2020 study of transgender adults, 73% of transgender women and 78% of transgender men reported that they first experienced gender dysphoria by age seven.”

And according to research conducted by Gilbert Herdt, PhD, Executive Director of the National Centers on Sexuality at San Francisco State University, and Martha K. McClintock, PhD, David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago, stated in their study “The Magical Age of 10,” published in the Dec. 2000 issue of Archives of Sexual Behavior:

“Accumulating studies from the United States over the past decade suggest that the development of sexual attraction may commence in middle childhood and achieve individual subjective recognition sometime around the age of 10. As these studies have shown, first same-sex attraction for males and females typically occurs at the mean age of 9.6 for boys and between the ages of 10 and 10.5 for girls.”

My point being is people often know their LGBTQ+ as kids and therefore queer representation is so important as they are going through these formative years to know they aren’t wrong, aren’t an abomination for who they love or what gender they identity or express themselves as.

I know this from a personal standpoint as I came of age in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, when being LGBTQ+ was much less accepted than it is now and there were few positive portrayals of queer people in the media and even fewer of Black queer folks like me. And because of this, I struggled with coming to terms with my sexuality and often thought of suicide.

And I know I’m not alone.

A 2022 national survey of 34,00 youth between 13 and 24 by The Trevor Project found:

• 45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the last year
• LGBTQ youth who felt high social support from their family reported attempting suicide at less than half the rate of those who felt low or moderate social support.
• LGBTQ youth who found their school to be LGBTQ-affirming reported lower rates of attempting suicide.
• LGBTQ youth who live in a community that is accepting of LGBTQ people reported significantly lower rates of attempting suicide than those who do not.
• 60% of LGBTQ youth who wanted mental health care in the past year were not able to get it.
• Fewer than 1 in 3 transgender and nonbinary youth found their home to be gender-affirming.
• 14% of LGBTQ youth attempted suicide in the past year.

(Including nearly 1 in 5 transgender and nonbinary youth and 1 in 10 cisgender youth.)

The stats don’t lie. When LGBTQ+ kids feel safe and supported, their mental health improves and they’re less likely to harm themselves.  

 The proponents of the gay hate agenda believe the opposite. They believe I and other LGBTQ+ people are trying to groom their kids, trying to brainwash them into mutilating their genitals as part of some grand gay conspiracy to destroy the nuclear family and Western Civilization. They want us to regress under the guise of protecting the children, because they and others like them believe being LGBTQ+ is inherently sexual.

Spoiler alert: it’s not.

In fact, the queer community includes members who fall on the asexual spectrum and th experience sexual attraction to varying degrees.

Conclusion

Being LGBTQ+ is no more inherently sexual than being straight. And that these people automatically associate being queer with sex says more about them than it does us.

But as I’ve said many times, before folks are queer adults, they’re queer kids. And they deserve to live their best lives free from people who claim to care about them while steadily doing everything in their power to make their lives worse.

 Banning books and media with LGBTQ+ content and events like Drag Story Time isn’t going to suddenly make everyone straight and cis. It will only make more of the children you profess to care about harm themselves.

It also shows your stupidity and lack of humanity. No one can make you LGBTQ+, no more than you can turn a queer person straight. You either are or you aren’t. To believe otherwise is simply homophobia and transphobia.

Being a kid, especially an LGBTQ+ one, is hard enough without becoming the poster child for a movement that is antithetical to everything you are.

If you want to protect children, then don’t put outdated gender norms and roles on them. Let them be whoever they turn out to be. If you can’t do that, then you shouldn’t be a parent.

Period.