Drag queens have become a hot topic of current debate and are seemingly everywhere. Like many aspects of “woke” culture, the overnight popularity of drag queens on the cultural landscape feels like a cicada invasion. Their emergence has been brooding for years, mirroring an intentional ideological agenda elevating queer identity.

Performers in drag are nothing new. Just as blackface was a feature of vaudeville performances, drag queens have been a feature of the nightclub circuit for decades, if not centuries. Men dressing up as gaudy caricatures of “women” were relegated to the stages of seedy adult entertainment venues. It was no secret that such performers were putting their own trans-sexual identity on display along with their sexual brokenness.

So why are these sexualized performers now appearing in front of children?

Drag Queen Story Hours (DQSH) debuted in San Francisco in 2015. DQSH chapters began organizing in cities across the country, creating a nonprofit network for promoting content and receiving funding. The American Library Association interviewed three “queens” from Chicago who were mainstreamed into area public libraries to help “humanize” their experience. As if overnight, these flamboyant sexualized caricatures of women were appearing in community libraries, local events, and public schools, taking center stage as the new face of “diversity and inclusion” and the new frontier for normalizing queer culture.

When “LGBT” evolved to add a “Q,” it was first recognized as “Questioning.” The evolution to “Queer” was easy and captured any selfidentity that did not align with a person’s actual male or female reality. Whereas “Transgender” represents one aspect of “gender identity” that maintains a binary view of sex, “Queer” serves as the catch-all for “other,” meaning in whatever way individuals choose to express their gender or sexuality, whether non-binary, gender non-conforming, or pansexual. The “queering” of mainstream culture is the ultimate objective of critical theorists and gender ideologues.

That drag queens have become the symbol and the messenger of this gender ideology is as sad as it is insidious. They are not the enemy, but their presence and promotion are being used by the enemy. Parading exaggerated sexual imagery and overt mockery of women in front of children is a direct challenge to normative standards of God-designed development and identity as male and female. Clearly, these “queens” are not comfortable in their own skin.

Drag queens construct, and encourage children to construct their own identity, rejecting their natural creation and their actual Creator. They sow identity confusion and perversely objectify human sexuality in order to reap a de-construction of human identity and natural order.

Dragging the drag queens into kids’ lives advances an ideology that transidentity and “queerness” are hallmarks of human experience and necessary to achieve “diversity and inclusion” in our communities. As Christians, parents, and citizens, we can accept the freedom of others to dress and express themselves, but we must guard against the public indoctrination of destructive gender ideology and its impact on our children.