Shock Poll: Most Parents Oppose ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’

Well, not really a shock at all.

According to a recent Rasmussen Reports survey*, the alleged support for “Drag Queen Story Hour” doesn’t include the parents of school-age children, who overwhelmingly oppose the phenomenon in which men dressed as women perform for children.

A Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey conducted in late October found that 60% of American Adults consider “Drag Queen Story Hour” not appropriate for children, including 44% who say it’s Not At All Appropriate. Only 29% think “Drag Queen Story Hour” is appropriate for children, including 11% who consider it Very Appropriate. Another 10% are not sure.

Among those who are parents or parents of school-age children, a majority (51%) believe “Drag Queen Story Hour” is Not At All Appropriate for children.

Earlier this year, it was reported that the nonprofit Drag Story Hour NYC, which sends crossdressing performers to interact with children as young as 3, had received more than $200,000 from New York taxpayers since 2018. Only 14% of American Adults believe taxpayer money should spent on “Drag Queen Story Hour,” while 71% say it should not receive taxpayer funding. Another 15% are not sure.

In a recent issue of his must-read online newsletter, our friend Christopher Rufo explains what’s really behind the drag queen story hours being hosted at schools, libraries, bookstores and even some churches – and the phenomenon is far more subversive and dangerous to children than its defenders claim.

Drag Queen Story Hour pitches itself as a family-friendly event to promote reading, tolerance, and inclusion. “In spaces like this,” the organization’s website reads, “kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where everyone can be their authentic selves.” But says Mr. Rufo (stating the obvious) many parents, even if reluctant to say it publicly, have an instinctual distrust of adult men in women’s clothing dancing and exploring sexual themes with their children.

But to mount an effective opposition, one must first understand the sexual politics behind the glitter, sequins, and heels. This, says Rufo, requires a working knowledge of an extensive history, from the origin of the first “queen of drag” in the late nineteenth century to the development of academic queer theory, which provides the intellectual foundation for the modern drag-for-kids movement.

The drag queen might appear as a comic figure, but he carries an utterly serious message: the deconstruction of sex, the reconstruction of child sexuality, and the subversion of middle-class family life.

The ideology that drives this movement was born in the sex dungeons of San Francisco and incubated in the academy. It is now being transmitted, with official state support, in a number of public libraries and schools across the United States. By excavating the foundations of this ideology and sifting through the literature of its activists, Mr. Rufo says parents and citizens can finally understand the new sexual politics and formulate a strategy for resisting it.

And what parents need to understand is that “Drag Queen Story Hour” is part of an intellectual and political project that requires drag queens and activists to work toward undermining traditional notions of sexuality, replacing the biological family with the ideological family, and arousing transgressive sexual desires in young children.

For the drag pedagogists, the traditional life path—growing up, getting married, working 40 hours a week, and raising a family—is an oppressive bourgeois norm that must be deconstructed and subverted.

Rasmussen’s survey shows parents instinctively distrust and oppose the imposition of fringe adult sexual themes upon their children.

Don’t let anyone tell you Drag Queen Story Hour is “harmless fun” or a “lesson in inclusiveness.” When parents, voters, and political leaders understand the true nature of Drag Queen Story Hour and the ideology that drives it, they will work quickly to restore the limits that have been temporarily—and recklessly—abandoned. They will draw a bright line between adult sexuality and childhood innocence, and send the perversions of “genderfuck,” “primitivism,” and “degeneracy” back to the margins, where they belong.

*The survey of 1,000 U.S. American Adults was conducted on October 26-27, 2022 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

• Drag Queen Story Hour

• Academic Queer Theory

• sexual abuse

• public libraries

• Gayle S. Rubin Essay Thinking Sex

• gender theory

• pedophilia

• transgenders

• Pat Califia

• RuPaul

• Harris Kornstein

• drag pedagogy

• Christopher Rufo