Mama bears vs. drag queens in schools

OPINION:

Having drag queens in schools is difficult to reconcile. There appears to be no logical rationale for trans men to dress up as seductresses and perform lewd acts in front of children in libraries and classrooms. I am not speaking to private settings here, but rather your child’s school learning environment, paid for with your tax dollars, being devoted for any amount of time to this activity. Yet these shenanigans are being organized by educators around the country, like a recent drag queen story hour in a first grade classroom in Philadelphia.

This year, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel advocated that every school in the state have drag queens. A mother pointed out in response that drag is adult entertainment, like a male revue where men strip-dance, or a gentlemen’s club where women strip-dance. And this in school?

As a young mother, I found it instinctive to nurture and train my children; to aid them in their development with exposure to what was good, right, just and proper, and protect them from harm. According to Abigail Tucker, author of “Mom Genes,” this transformation of a woman who becomes a mom is involuntary as her “inner lioness” is activated.  A mother’s fight-or-flight instinct is heightened as she rises to protect her child at all costs. Apparently, Ms. Nessel — who has two kids — doesn’t have that.

In his opening salvo after being sworn in as speaker of the Florida House, Rep. Paul Renner said: “Ideologues … have pushed indoctrination at the expense of education. They spend more time defending drag queen story time than actually promoting phonics and the science of reading. In this election, moms and dads clearly told these ideologues: ’Our children are not your social experiment.’”

He’s right on target with the mama bears we have seen and heard as they took to school board meeting lecterns across America to fight to remove sexualized material from their child’s classrooms. And according to a recent Rasmussen poll, 69% of parents oppose sexually explicit books being present in high school libraries, 79% oppose them in middle school libraries and 85% oppose them in elementary school libraries. It’s not a big leap to assume they oppose drag queens at story hour.

If a drag queen approached a child off school property and showed them pornographic acts, they could be thrown in jail for violating obscenity laws. But walk 50 feet through the doors and into the elementary school, and all bets are off.

In Florida, a legal loophole allows school librarians and resource center managers to approve sexually explicit materials on the grounds of overall literary value. One Florida mother told me that it would be like having a Playboy-style centerfold in “Little House on the Prairie.”

Educators must know that porno-style books and dances for kids make a deep impression on young minds. According to the Harvard Center for the Developing Child, children undergo rapid and critical development from birth through 8 years or third grade due to the elasticity of the child’s brain. The quality of a child’s brain architecture is determined during this time. It is shaped by a combination of heredity and experiences, with toxic experiences creating a lifelong negative impact on mental health.

As Dorothy Law Nolte said, “Children learn what they live.” If a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight. If a child lives with shame, he learns to feel guilty. I would add, if a child lives with sexual perversion, promiscuity and abuse, they will likely become perverted, promiscuous and abusive.  

As parents, my husband and I were committed to shaping the young minds of our children with good books and wholesome entertainment, rich in truth and focused on good character. Moms and dads, never give up the fight for your child’s mental, physical, social and spiritual well-being. Insist on getting sexually explicit images in all forms — including drag queen story hour — out of your child’s school.

If that can’t happen fast enough for you and your family, take your child out of public or private schools that support these materials and activities. Join us in fighting for legislation that allows the money to follow the student to whatever learning environment you feel is best as a parent. In addition, we need to work to elect leaders that will protect our parental rights and put academics ahead of polarizing issues that have no academic value.

• Tamra Farah is the Senior Advisor at FreedomWorks’ ParentsKnowBest.com K-12 education initiative. She previously served as executive director of strategic initiatives at the conservative parental rights group Moms for America, and is a former chair of the El Paso County Republican Party in Colorado.