Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Anti-LGBTQ news report accidentally gives positive view of 'Drag Queen Story Hour'



The video above is a shocker, but not for the reasons you think.

First, a little background. Drag Queen Story Hour is an innocent event held in libraries across the nation in which fully dressed drag queens read stories to children. One would think that such an event would be ripe for exploitation by the religious right/anti-LGBTQ industry.

But it isn't. Believe it or not, anti-LGBTQ organizations, fake news sites, and personalities have been steadily attacking the event in order to galvanize their supporters with yet another conspiracy theory about the so-called promotion of homosexuality to children. And it's been a failure.  The main reason behind this is the simple fact that Drag Queen Story Hour is a popular event with the children and their parents. In fact, the parents have to give approval for their children to attend. A lot of parents do such and attend the events themselves with their children.

And that brings us to the above video from August. It is of a "news report" done by CBN - the Christian Broadcasting Network owned by longtime anti-LGBTQ pastor Pat Robertson. In spite of its title and attempts to create hysteria, the news report is an objective view of Drag Queen Story Hour. It even makes those who oppose the event look slightly unhinged.

Of course, that's not to say it doesn't try to be hysterical. At 1:21 of the video, the news report attempts to demonstrate how a drag queen "encouraged" a child to become one herself.  Then it made the mistake of playing the full conversation, which led me to ask what's wrong with being a drag queen superhero?

 Maybe there was a full moon out when this report was being edited. But whatever the case was, it actually makes a positive case for Drag Queen Story Hour by, in spite of a few instances, talking to the drag queens, a parent who had no problem with the event, and showing the children clearly having fun and not being harmed or confused.

I say we should enjoy this video before CBN realizes what it has done.

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