French state-backed media say American conservatives, not LGBT activists, are to blame for the “culture war” over drag queen events aimed at small children.
France 24, a government-owned news organisation which produces English, French, Spanish, and Arabic content aimed at foreign audiences, was one of many outlets which published a pro-drag article acquired from Agence France-Presse (AFP), a news agency founded as a state enterprise and still deeply entangled with the French state.
As output from a notionally impartial wire service, the article has been published by a huge number of media outlets, sometimes automatically — but it is far from impartial, arguing that drag queens are the “newest targets” in “America’s rolling ‘culture wars’ over gender and education”, with conservatives “assailing them as a threat to public decency and family values”.
“At the heart of the debate are children’s events known as ‘Drag Queen Story Hour,’ which have spread around the country since being launched in San Francisco in 2015 with the aim of promoting both reading and diversity,” the article suggested, praising the “mostly male” readers as “flaunt[ing] a feminine aesthetic in flamboyant costumes and wigs, high-heel stilettos, and an abundance of make-up.”
“The idea is hardly a shock in a country where drag has moved from niche nightlife spots into the cultural mainstream — thanks in particular to high-profile exposure on the hit television show ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’,” the article further asserted, as if to express surprise that anyone could object to the events as transgressing established cultural norms.
“But that is not stopping part of the right from portraying ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ as a national nightmare: progressive activism gone wild at best, and at worst a sexually charged threat to ‘children’s innocence’,” it continued, the use of scare quotes appearing to suggest there is some question as to whether the innocence of children is even a legitimate concept.
Whether LGBT and diversity activists pushing drag queen events aimed at children so vigorously in recent years, often with public money, might be the true prime mover of the “culture war” surrounding drag does not appear to have entered into the minds of the journalists at the AFP, the oldest and third-largest news agency in the world.
Their article emphasised “controversial” state-level legislation proposed by several American lawmakers aimed at restricting the sorts of events that can be targeted at children.
“The opposition to drag shows has sometimes taken violent turns,” the AFP added, noting that “there were 141 incidents of anti-LGBTQ protests and threats targeting drag events, according to the GLAAD rights organization” in 2022 — although there is of course a big difference between “protests” and “threats”, making the figure arguably disingenuous.
“[C]ounter-demonstrations are becoming more widespread,” the AFP article added, highlighting a recent incident in Washington in which “demonstrators with rainbow umbrellas stood at a library entrance, forming a colourful phalanx protecting attendees who had come to hear the drag queens.”
“Equipped with loudspeakers, they played Disney hits from ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Encanto’ to underscore that — however fraught the politics — these events are designed first and foremost with children in mind.”
This, of course, is the key problem for people on both sides of the Atlantic who object to drag events aimed at children — some of which do not even include story-reading.
One event which went viral in Britain recently, for example, was put on by the CABA-BABA-RAVE group, and saw drag queens in skimpy thongs and thigh-high heeled boots performing undeniably sexual acrobatic routines for an audience of babies and toddlers.
Conservatives’ fears that some drag queens may have ulterior motives for wanting to interact with children have proved to be not entirely without foundation, with at least one publicly-funded event in Houston, Texas including a story-reader later discovered to be a convicted paedophile.
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