Why are Republicans so obsessed with drag queens right now?

[afleitch]

As I mentioned on another post, when I was 7, I took my first Communion in a tuxedo holding hands with a girl in a white dress with veil while walking down the aisle to the priest.

For every adult around me that was perfectly normal. It's changed now, not because of the imagery but because people were under enormous social pressure to buy expensive outfits.

Not only that, we were led IN A PARADE to the chapel.

I went to a religious school. For Good Friday I think the same year, we had to draw Jesus on a cross. We had to draw a dead executed prisoner. With blood, and fluids draining from the side. Again. Deemed completely normal and appropriate. I always tell this story because the issue they had with me wasn't for overzealous use of a red pencil, or having Jesus' spleen leak out a bit too high pressure, but for giving Jesus nipples. Because I used the giant crucifix on the wall as a reference point.

But who needs context or nuance right?

If you want to live in a world where you think all this is appropriate and drag queens reading books is a moral outrage, live in it. If you bang on about parental choice but don't extend it here, you do you.

I take quite a balanced view on both, despite the fact that if I become a parent, there's not a hope in hell I'm sending my children to church.

I take the balanced view, that drag can be 'adult' and also not and that religion can be 'adult' and also not because I'm a functioning member of society.

[SWE]

If something is not happening outside a few bad apples than you should have no problem banning it cause by your definition not much would change. By calling the side who wants to ban it bigots then by definition you are implying your side has something to hide which is why the spin of "This isnt happening but you are a bigot if you oppose it" has failed miserably

Expanding the enforcement powers of the state as a solution in search of a problem to satisfy internet trolls and bigots like yourself is bad actually. "Well probably this bill won't actually have much practical effect" is not an argument in favor of passing a bill

[T0rM3nTeD]

I would trust a loosely supervised (1 adult for 10 kids or so) drag queen story hour at the local public library for my 5 year old over a loosely supervised (same ratio) sunday school class at the local Christian Church/Catholic Church.

[Del Tachi]

Drag is not obscene or inherently sexual.  But that doesn't mean schools or public libraries should be putting on drag performances for young kids.

Moderate hero option?

I saw people in drag every Christmas as a kid. In theaters. In my school. How is reading a book in drag an inappropriate 'performance?' I'm really struggling to understand the American mindset here.

Yes, ensemble performances have had men dressing as women since time immemorial.  There's a long history of "drag" in Western theater and even the church, to be sure. 

But the rationale for drag queen story hour is that it advances certain lines of LGBT advocacy by bringing unconventional nightlife characters into traditionally reserved, family-friendly spaces.  The humor/tension of seeing drag queens reading to kids in libraries challenges people to reassess what drag performance is and who it is for.  The use of public power and public space to push this envelope is rightfully controversial. 

[Pres Mike]

Drag queens should be banned from public libraries and schools. Thank god I live in a community where this would never happen.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/michigan-dem-calls-for-a-drag-queen-for-every-school/

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/mar/9/drag-queen-performing-democratic-retreat-has-calle/

https://www.mobilize.us/dailykos/event/462610/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-drag-queen-texas-bill-senator-weiner

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nyc-congresswoman-promotes-drag-queen-story-hour-for-children/

https://thehill.com/homenews/wire/3514357-dallas-drag-queen-event-for-kids-sparks-outrage-defense/

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/how-does-kamala-harris-hugging-a-nearly-naked-drag-queen-uphold-the-dignity-of-the-office/

Yes, it is the Republicans who are injecting sexualized burlesque cabaret adult entertainment into everything.

>Sane Response
>Ft. Free Beacon, Fox News, and the National Review

[T'Chenka]

Drag queens should be banned from public libraries and schools. Thank god I live in a community where this would never happen.

Banned on what specific grounds? How would you word the legal text?

[OSR stands with Israel]

If something is not happening outside a few bad apples than you should have no problem banning it cause by your definition not much would change. By calling the side who wants to ban it bigots then by definition you are implying your side has something to hide which is why the spin of "This isnt happening but you are a bigot if you oppose it" has failed miserably

Expanding the enforcement powers of the state as a solution in search of a problem to satisfy internet trolls and bigots like yourself is bad actually. "Well probably this bill won't actually have much practical effect" is not an argument in favor of passing a bill

Well if you think stuff like CRT should be used in public education and there should be no pushback well then you should at least support school vouchers. Otherwise the government interfering in public education is a proper role of government since they are literally in charge of it

[T'Chenka]

If something is not happening outside a few bad apples than you should have no problem banning it cause by your definition not much would change. By calling the side who wants to ban it bigots then by definition you are implying your side has something to hide which is why the spin of "This isnt happening but you are a bigot if you oppose it" has failed miserably

Expanding the enforcement powers of the state as a solution in search of a problem to satisfy internet trolls and bigots like yourself is bad actually. "Well probably this bill won't actually have much practical effect" is not an argument in favor of passing a bill

Well if you think stuff like CRT should be used in public education and there should be no pushback well then you should at least support school vouchers. Otherwise the government interfering in public education is a proper role of government since they are literally in charge of it

Very very few people are advocating for woke intersectionality in public education. It's mostly a nothingburger that the GOP is using to whip voters into a fear-anger frenzy.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

But the rationale for drag queen story hour is that it advances certain lines of LGBT advocacy by bringing unconventional nightlife characters into traditionally reserved, family-friendly spaces.  The humor/tension of seeing drag queens reading to kids in libraries challenges people to reassess what drag performance is and who it is for.  The use of public power and public space to push this envelope is rightfully controversial. 

And this is worth discussing. (Personally, I'm less than thrilled with many aspects of drag culture myself, both because I am a prude and for "uncool" seventies-feminist reasons mostly inherited from my mother. I probably wouldn't go to one of these things with my kid if I had a kid and if my local library system did anything like this, which I don't and which it doesn't.) But what we are seeing is not discussion; it's hysteria escalating to the point of physical intimidation and regurgitation of a particular set of homophobic fears that until a year or so ago I assumed had died out with my grandparents' generation.

[Pres Mike]

Drag queens should be banned from public libraries and schools. Thank god I live in a community where this would never happen.

Banned on what specific grounds? How would you word the legal text?

Easy

Defund any public library that has “drag queen story time”.

[DrScholl]

Because the ideology cannot survive with a villain to scare their base of voters about.

[Agonized-Statism]

just like they did a decade ago when they were rambling about the free Obama phones

Oh man, nostalgia, I haven't thought about the Obamaphones in years

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Drag queens should be banned from public libraries and schools. Thank god I live in a community where this would never happen.

Banned on what specific grounds? How would you word the legal text?

Easy

Defund any public library that has “drag queen story time”.

Defund this, defund that. Why is this country so damn obsessed with collectively punishing local populations as a go-to policy instrument?

[parochial boy]

Drag queens should be banned from public libraries and schools. Thank god I live in a community where this would never happen.

Banned on what specific grounds? How would you word the legal text?

Easy

Defund any public library that has “drag queen story time”.

Defund this, defund that. Why is this country so damn obsessed with collectively punishing local populations as a go-to policy instrument?

Hot take, but the neoliberal project has the destruction of public services as a key end goal anyway. So if you can manipulate culture war hysterics to this end then why not use it? Doesn't matter whether you are posing as a progressive or a conservative because that's not the real purpose.

[Joe Republic]

Drag queens should be banned from public libraries and schools. Thank god I live in a community where this would never happen.

Banned on what specific grounds? How would you word the legal text?

Easy

Defund any public library that has “drag queen story time”.

https://twitter.com/lynndeeslibrary/status/1538144495245701120?s=21

But never mind that.  PresMike thinks men playing dress up is a bannable offense because he thinks it's weird and icky, so fck all the poor people in that community too.

[Pres Mike]

Drag queens should be banned from public libraries and schools. Thank god I live in a community where this would never happen.

Banned on what specific grounds? How would you word the legal text?

Easy

Defund any public library that has “drag queen story time”.

https://twitter.com/lynndeeslibrary/status/1538144495245701120?s=21
But never mind that.  PresMike thinks men playing dress up is a bannable offense because he thinks it's weird and icky, so fck all the poor people in that community too.

I love libraries. I don't own a print so when I need to print or fax something I go to the local library. Or Officemax.

[T'Chenka]

Drag queens should be banned from public libraries and schools. Thank god I live in a community where this would never happen.

Banned on what specific grounds? How would you word the legal text?

Easy

Defund any public library that has “drag queen story time”.

https://twitter.com/lynndeeslibrary/status/1538144495245701120?s=21
But never mind that.  PresMike thinks men playing dress up is a bannable offense because he thinks it's weird and icky, so fck all the poor people in that community too.

I love libraries. I don't own a print so when I need to print or fax something I go to the local library. Or Officemax.

Say goodbye to that once your library is defunded by Republicans.

[Joe Republic]

https://twitter.com/lynndeeslibrary/status/1538144495245701120?s=21
But never mind that.  PresMike thinks men playing dress up is a bannable offense because he thinks it's weird and icky, so fck all the poor people in that community too.

I love libraries. I don't own a print so when I need to print or fax something I go to the local library. Or Officemax.

Ok?  So you would sacrifice all of that if even your own library were to schedule a drag queen story time?


@DaleCooper: See, this is why fighting back against right-wingers' bizarre social crusades is always worth fighting.  You think standing up for drag queens here is a weird hill to die on, but as our friend above just demonstrated, he would be willing to defund public libraries to accomplish it.  These people are not just taking an inch; they're scorching the whole mile at the very same time.

Btw, yes I recognize and agree that there are more pressing matters of concern than this that have hit the headlines in the past 48 hours.

[DaleCooper]

https://twitter.com/lynndeeslibrary/status/1538144495245701120?s=21
But never mind that.  PresMike thinks men playing dress up is a bannable offense because he thinks it's weird and icky, so fck all the poor people in that community too.

I love libraries. I don't own a print so when I need to print or fax something I go to the local library. Or Officemax.

Ok?  So you would sacrifice all of that if even your own library were to schedule a drag queen story time?


@DaleCooper: See, this is why fighting back against right-wingers' bizarre social crusades is always worth fighting.  You think standing up for drag queens here is a weird hill to die on, but as our friend above just demonstrated, he would be willing to defund public libraries to accomplish it.  These people are not just taking an inch; they're scorching the whole mile at the very same time.

Btw, yes I recognize and agree that there are more pressing matters of concern than this that have hit the headlines in the past 48 hours.

You have to pick your battles.

Would you rather have a Democratic Party that regularly condemns whatever the next weird leftwing dysfunction of the day is but ultimately never does anything to stop it, or a party that publicly defends unpopular cultural phenomena and then goes on to regularly lose elections to deranged conservative Republicans? The past 48 hours (including Clarence Thomas's admitted eagerness to allow the criminalization of homosexuality!) have been as clear an example as can be that we don't need a Democratic Party that validates people's lived experiences, we need one that wins.

[T'Chenka]

4
You have to pick your battles.

Would you rather have a Democratic Party that regularly condemns whatever the next weird leftwing dysfunction of the day is but ultimately never does anything to stop it, or a party that publicly defends unpopular cultural phenomena and then goes on to regularly lose elections to deranged conservative Republicans? The past 48 hours (including Clarence Thomas's admitted eagerness to allow the criminalization of homosexuality!) have been as clear an example as can be that we don't need a Democratic Party that validates people's lived experiences, we need one that wins.

You're making sense logically but you're missing or downplaying some important aspects:

A lot of the Dem LGBTQ stuff is, as you correctly charactrrized it, Democrats DEFENDING "unpopular cultural phenomena". They aren't obsessed with shoving it down your throat, but they're gonna stand for civil rights under attack and be anti-bigotry. This is defense not offense. Perhaps an even more important point is that this "unpopular cultural phenomenon" is likey to get more and more accepted every year and eventually be mostly accepted by society, just like gay people, interracial marriage, atheism and gay marriage. It's more along the lines of "it's a long trrm battle and we feel a moral obligation to fight". What you're advocating for now translates in the past into "don't fight for desegregation even though segregation is immoral, because the issue isn't popular enough yet". Politics isn't JUST winning and losing. It's advocacy for justice as well. You can't entirely remove morality from the equation and just look at polling data.

[Joe Republic]

You have to pick your battles.

That would be nice, but I don't want to get so focused on winning the battle of abortion rights and gun control etc etc (and I fully intend to fight for them all), and then turn around and realize that we somehow just lost all our public libraries because the PresMikes across the nation cut all their funding over some harmless drag queens.

To win, Democrats need to (a) figure out their goddamn mess of a messaging strategy, and (b) fight harder on every front.  I'll say it again; we should never give these insane assholes a single inch.

[DaleCooper]

You have to pick your battles.

That would be nice, but I don't want to get so focused on winning the battle of abortion rights and gun control etc etc (and I fully intend to fight for them all), and then turn around and realize that we somehow just lost all our public libraries because the PresMikes across the nation cut all their funding over some harmless drag queens.

To win, Democrats need to (a) figure out their goddamn mess of a messaging strategy, and (b) fight harder on every front.  I'll say it again; we should never give these insane assholes a single inch.

I would never allow for the defunding of public libraries. The messaging strategy is not to fight harder on every front. It's to let the Republicans freak out about their stupid culture war crap, let them look insane, and then focus on real issues.

If fat Republicans want to protest drag queen story hour, they can and they will, regardless of whether Democrats make public statements about how much they love it. It doesn't help if Democrats engage with this crap. It actually hurts because it draws more attention to it. The answer to this really is to ignore it completely, distance yourself from politically irrelevant crap, and get ahead of it and say something along the lines of "Children's innocence is so important to me and it should be preserved yada yada yada" and then if conservatives want to defund public libraries you come out against that.

No one needs the approval or endorsement of some politician. Drag queens don't need public solidarity from legislators and no one needs a rainbow White House. They need elected officials who will appoint liberal judges, pass anti-discrimination legislation, and run the economy smoothly so that Republicans either have to moderate or be content to lose most elections.

[Joe Republic]

So that I understand this clearly whenever there's a new culture war front line:

If it's the right who are the aggressors: "Meh, the right is being weird and dumb for complaining about this, but the left just needs to sit down and stay quiet on this one because otherwise they look even worse."

If it's the left who are the aggressors: "Society needs to fight back against these radical maniacs with every fiber of their being!  Hold the line against the woke menace!!"

[DaleCooper]

So that I understand this clearly whenever there's a new culture war front line:

If it's the right who are the aggressors: "Meh, the right is being weird and dumb for complaining about this, but the left just needs to sit down and stay quiet on this one because otherwise they look even worse."

If it's the left who are the aggressors: "Society needs to fight back against these radical maniacs with every fiber of their being!  Hold the line against the woke menace!!"

Yes.