Welcome to Struggle Session, where I share and sometimes respond to comments from readers and listener about my column and podcast. Because who doesn’t like to be held? Accountable and otherwise?
I’ve been talking a lot lately about drag bans and the “groomer” slur — the right’s seemingly successful effort to bring back the “homosexuals don’t have their own children so they have to recruit yours” blood libel of the late 1970s (see: Anita Bryant, Jerry Falwell Sr., Jesse Helms, et al) — and Alex had a thought…
Can we talk about how if the right defines “grooming” as drag or being gay, then that opens the door for actual grooming to take place and for actual harm to come to kids? While all these folks are looking at drag queens, they’ll have Uncle Hubert diddling their kid in the corner and never see it. Lying about what grooming is is the greater risk to kids.
Yep. All those demagogues on the right point at drag queens would have to be — at this point — knowingly and intentionally distracting people from the real threat to their kids: It’s the youth pastors, stupid. (And...