Opposing Views: Is Drag Appropriate for Kids? | John Casey & Bryan Slaton

Intro

there are people who are afraid of men dressing up like women and acting crazy and um you know that's look not here to judge anybody if like they said if a parent doesn't want their children around it then they don't need to be there they can make the decision it's very simple um at the same at the same time if a parent wants to go to with their child to a drag reading hour they should be able to do that and they should be able to have fun they shouldn't have to be protested and they shouldn't have to be interrupted by proud boys the drag queen exists in from a sexual nature that's what it's the drag queen is for they only take basically two qualities of a woman and and they don't they don't focus on intelligence they don't focus on work ethic they don't focus on anything nurturing they don't focus on just the sexual and the materialistic side and so why would we want to teach kids that's what a woman is why would we want to do that and besides that what what would be the benefit to having a female stripper sit down and read to the kids [Music] welcome to my podcast i'm michaela peterson this is the michaela peterson podcast and this is an opposing views episode on drag story time and drag shows posing views is a series where i speak with individuals on opposite sides of a contentious issue and this issue is definitely contentious it was very interesting on one side i had john casey a widely published writer for the advocate a lgbtq the largest lgbtq magazine in the u.s on the other side of this debate i had brian slaton a former youth minister and current state representative of texas in the last few months you guys have probably seen there have been a number of viral videos showing parents bringing children to drag shows a lot of people and parents especially have been upset by that a lot of people have supported it drag shows in bars drag story time in libraries drag story time at the toronto zoo in this episode we discussed those videos the history of drag in the us drag isn't something new the difference between drag shows and other drag events like drag queen's story time grooming why drag is an issue now age requirements for attending drag shows and a lot more a special thanks to john casey for coming on this episode he's on the left and given my more right-leaning audience i do appreciate getting left-wing people on here to hear their opinions about political issues because we do need to continue hearing both sides so please remember to be kind to the participants so i can get more people to agree to come on and discuss these issues and i can keep doing opposing views thank you so much for listening i hope you enjoyed this episode before we get into it though you're probably aware that inflation recently reached its highest rate since 1985. and i don't think anyone knows for sure how bad it is going to get hopefully things stabilize again sooner rather than later you can hope for that anyway i don't know if things are going to get worse there's a apparently a food shortage things might get really bad you can invest your money with goldco though they sponsored this episode they're a leader in gold and silver retirement accounts gold ira it's wise to protect your life savings especially right now while you can by investing in precious metals like gold and silver my family has money in precious metals so i'm not just saying that through gold co you get a guaranteed way to protect the worth of your financial assets and retirement savings even though inflation reduces the worth of your money in the bank the value of gold and silver has historically been a lot more stable especially during inflation over the last decade gold go has made it possible for thousands of americans to protect over a billion dollars in retirement savings with more than one thousand star customer ratings gold co is an easy place to start safeguarding your retirement and right now they're offering a promotion that gives qualifying new customers up to ten thousand dollars in free silver which is a pretty sweet deal you can diversify your investments today by visiting mplikesgold.com and they'll give you up to ten thousand dollars in free silver when you open a qualifying account that's mplakesgold.com tell them that i sent you and enjoy this episode john casey welcome to my podcast well thank you for having me nice to be here great yeah thank you very much for coming on before we get started can you give me a brief background about who you are and what it is you do sure well i'm i i've been in public relations most of my life still am to a certain extent but i worked on capitol hill at the beginning of my career for about seven years moved to new york and worked for a couple of international pr agencies and then ran media relations for ceos and kmart toys r us and macy's and then i worked for three years with the united nations on climate change to the run-up to the paris accords simultaneously i worked for um mike bloomberg when he was u.n climate envoy and then i'd been in um digital for the last few years doing uh a pr for some digital companies so and then on the side i uh i do two columns per week for the advocate where i touch on societal political entertainment and topical news issues that affect the lgbtq community so i have an opportunity to speak with you know all of the leaders and all of the great voices in the lgbtq community and it's been an awesome way to get to know people and um and to be able to cover uh what's who who's affected you know serious issues political issues um spoke you know to most of the out members of congress uh i spoke to ellen when she left her show she only spoke to me and one other reporter um i i spoke to shirley maclaine yesterday so i have a great column coming up about her so i it just um you know i get to take the column in different ways and then i've written about uh drag queens so um i i feel like that i've uh been able to touch on most of the issues that affect the community okay perfect well i invited you on um to get your perspective on drag queen drag queens shows and the most recent kind of media frenzy that's involved having kids attend drag queen shows so that was maybe two months ago that that kind of blew up online yeah well they're not attending drag queen shows they're going to drag drag queen reading hours so there's a big difference there i don't know if you've ever been to a drag queen show but um it's a little rivalled and uh the the it's entertainment and um uh when i take for when friends come into new york city to see me straight friends we go to what's called drag brunch uh it's a real popular thing in new york and they're so much fun and even in miami uh the palace uh bar which is um on ocean drive they have drag happy hour which is enormously popular you can't go anywhere near that place the sidewalks are full the traffic is stopped so drag shows are one thing then you have drag reading hours which libraries do mostly public libraries i do for kids and it's just a way for kids to be engaged in a book to someone who is an entertainer okay um do you think that the idea of exposing kids to drag queens is too sexual for people at a certain age well it's not sexual it's um first of all i think i think the biggest reason people have probably misperception misconceptions about um drag queens is because they haven't met them or they haven't seen them um drag queens are entertainers um and when they are in a setting of a library reading a book they're there to have fun with kids just like anybody else would except there they are dressed in you know very flamboyant costumes um so it's they're not imparting any uh sexual identity or or talking about themselves or talking about what they do they're there just to read a story and help the kids along with the story and make sure the kids have fun um it's not threatening in the least certainly you would never take a child to um a drag brunch for example that that's all out of a question or drag show but with the drag happy hour or i'm sorry with it with the drag reading hour it's it it's innocent it's just fun so i i think the um i think it i think it was about two months ago the event that had people all up in arms i believe that was an actual drag show that it was in called drag your kids to pride did you see the clips of that show going on online yeah but there again i think that um is up to the parents that is solely a parent's responsibility to decide whether they want to take their child to that or not um it's not up to me to tell a parent when it's age appropriate for them uh to see something like that so that is totally a parental judgment um and and if they want to take their kids and and and take them to a pride event or pry drag share thing again that is that is a parent's call and parents have every right to be able to make the decision on that um how do you feel about the recent legislature that's trying to be advanced that puts kind of drag shows into the same category as strip shows and says no parents can't take their kids there they can go once they're 18 or 21. well it's all political i i think through this particularly through this midterm uh election the lgbtq community has really been um singled out um and used for our political purposes so you you have that one you have don't say gay um in florida and you know primarily that that's um but there's a lot wrong with that but the biggest issue is that parents don't want their kids subjected to talking about sexual identity in kindergarten and grade school well that's not happening so this that was one thing with singled out and all these states are trying to replicate what ron desantis which they can't really do and then as a matter of fact there are other states that do have the don't say gay laws on the book then you have what's going on with trans youth and and politicians using trans youth as a um as a political wedge issue um you're gonna have uh um not just trans youth but transgender people too um there's been a lot of what you just referenced these bills which are not addressing any problem um there is not a problem of parents swarming into drag shows with their children in tow that doesn't happen and you know uh and most bars aren't going to let kids in if it's a pride event again it's it's out in the public it's up to the it's up to the parent same thing with with you know a drag reading hour if the parents aren't comfortable with it they don't have to send their kids so these bills that are popped up are for problems that are non-existent and they're just being used as political wedge issues hmm interesting um do you think so one of the concerns that's on the more conservative or republican side is that um say say the number of trans youth in the last 15 years has increased dramatically and they believe that that's because there's an ideology being pushed in public schools and so part of the kind of pushback against this is oh i don't want you to teach my kids this ideology because they're concerned they'll be pushed into a into an ideology so how do you feel about that well it's not an ideology um you're born gay um and you're born whether you are a a child you know a teenager who feels that they are a boy or a girl um you know it's inherent in you yes it's been been on the horizon there's been many arguments and [Music] discussion points of what why that has been and i think chief among them and having talked to trans youth is that there's um people uh kids are more open today and and there are um role models for for these kids somebody like elliot page who who who who is is brave enough to be able to come forward and and admit the fact that they they feel that they are a male and so um and then you can see what's going on on the right i mean just yesterday marjorie taylor green dead named um uh assistant secretary of health rachel levine i know her i've talked to her but this is an incredible person incredibly she's incredibly smart i'm so again all of these things i feel like are trying to are trying to get people frightened uh get people scared the fact that transgender people are around and um you know that that's not the case nobody's pushing an ideology people are people just want to be who they are okay let me see um do you think that there's um this is another argument i've heard this another argument i've heard the dangers say say one side is wrong there's the side that says this is an ideology and then there's a side that says people are born this way and we should be open to that so that we're not prejudiced against people we're not hateful right those are badly worded those are kind of the two sides if the conservative side is wrong um then people are i would say ostracized until they're about 18 and can transition over right and if the liberal side is wrong and kids are more susceptible to these ideas what happens if you get kids who transition surgically or with medication and can't transition back okay so those are rare cases um very very rare um i think we just need to take a step back you're talking about conservative and the liberal side but why don't you ask a conservative parent who has a child who who wants to transition because they know they they believe and the parents have studied the issue they talk to doctors they talk to psychologists it's not as if michaela that uh a child comes to their parent and says i'm i'm a girl and i want to be a boy and then somebody just flips a switch in the back of their head and there was a process to go through a very long um and very strenuous process to make sure that the child is in the right place to do something like that you know oftentimes not oftentimes but it does happen that the doctors won't agree to it because they do feel like so there are guard rails set up for if you want to call it the conservative side of people making what they consider to be this drastic switch but there's the guard rails are set up specifically to protect the child and again it goes all the way back to the parents decision and how they want to handle this and i've spoken to so many parents who have transgender kids that want to transition and you know the biggest issue for them is they see when the child uh for example somebody i just spoke to um who was a boy when the the child is dressing like a girl and and doing girl thing how happy that child is parents know that um you know there's always also the thing that that mothers always know when their son is gay it falls back on that too parents have a general idea if their child um might not be comfortable uh in the in the in the identity that they were born with and so all of the yes there's arguments back and forth back and forth but i think it's very important for and they do seek them out is for um the parents of these youth uh who are dealing with it to talk about to read their stories to reach out to them um they're they're not liberal or conservative they're just parents and they want to do what's best for their kids um do you know could you give a brief description of what a drag show is for anyone who doesn't know and when they started oh okay well you know drag has been around forever um and it's been um and i'll just stick to the u.s it's a lot of history in in europe but in the u.s i'm sure you don't know what vaudeville is most most younger people don't but vaudeville was really the um the entertainment venue for lack of a better term back at the turn of the century and there were traveling shows where they did song and dance and told really bad jokes but most of the uh performers were men and they dressed like women and they did songs and they did dances and and people came out to see them and so that was the early early type of of what we consider to be drag um a lot of them were called transvestites which you know is not a word that means anything in today but back then that that's what they were called and then you can go through i mean uh my own personal knowledge on this is that um you know somebody like milton berle you say who was milton berle well back in the early late 40s and early 50s he was television's biggest star he was also one of the most famous comedians in the world he spent most of his career he dressed like a woman and of course it was for fun it was making jokes and um but he probably was the most famous drag queen um in in hollywood for for a long time and then came along um flip wilson in the late 60s he had a television show and he created a character named geraldine and so geraldine was trying again so did you know do you know about that yeah yeah i think i've seen that i'm familiar with vaudeville too oh yeah i'm sure you are because you're a very intelligent person so um thank you i'm i'm not just saying that so um yeah so then you you know martin lawrence has done it uh jamie foxx has done it look at medea um and the success of medea he's in drag um and then i don't know if he saw first ladies on show time but you know uh eleanor roosevelt went into a gay bar um there were drag shows people were dressing like eleanor roosevelt and they dressed like betty davis and karma miranda so all of this all of this has been around and then look at look at television some like bosom buddies that was an emmy award-winning show and uh tootsie which won the oscar dustin hoffman was in drag nutty professor kinky boots the terrific performance by philip seymour hoffman and flawless where where he played a drag queen so it's it's and some like it hot with uh tony curtis and jack lemmon you know that was back in the early 60s so the drag uh of of men like entertainers dressing as women has been a long for been around for a long time and so if you want uh back to your now question about a drag show so you know drag shows mostly are um performers um who come out and lip sync and dance the songs some of them sing for real um they usually intersperse their performance with with jokes they rip on the audience it's it's fun it's it's hilarious um you know it's adult entertainment it's adult entertainment um because it's done in bars or or you know um restaurants where it's no holds bars it's terrific um so that would be a drag show and then like i explained there's a drag brunch where um you go into very popular in new york so many places now do drag but you go in and you gotta have an hour and a half a bottomless mimosas and drag performers come and they dance and sing and you feel like you're in a club and it's really it's really a great way to spend uh early uh afternoon from saturday and sundays um so those are drag shows and then i i told you about the one in miami at the palace which is the it's a it's epic i mean you can't walk around this anywhere near the palace when they do their drive happy hour and the drag performers run out on the street and they're lip-syncing songs they're dancing with the crowd it's really you know it's not gay people it's predominantly straight people who stop and watch this so drag has been um and then one final thing i guess other um rupaul drag race i mean that show is is uh you know emmy nominated it's um it's one of the trendiest shows out there and a lot of the performers on there have gone on and done other things for example um i think it was uh american idol one of them performed an american idol so um so drag queens are everywhere um drake shows are everywhere most everywhere and um there are lots of fun there are entertainers first and foremost um drag queens are entertainers um i went to a drag show when i was in new york um i think i was uh i was definitely i was probably 15 i think and it was yeah i'm not sure how i snuck in there but it was like it was mostly i think most of the people in there in the place i went to were bachelorettes so bachelorettes like bachelorette parties yeah i from what i remember i think it was mostly bachelorette parties yes that happens to you there's a lot of bachelor that's a really a popular thing for um for batch bachelorette parties is to go to a drag show um it's so much fun it really is and there's no um there's there's no political statement being made about oh we should all be able to dress in in track or and it's fun they're entertainers they're just there to make the crowd laugh to make the crowd happy that that's all they want to do so do you think that this event that happened a couple of months ago that kind of went viral particularly i think in conservative realms do you think that was more which with kids going to a drag show do you think that was more of an isolated incident yes exactly and i'm wondering why um we're not talking about the proud boys uh which are going around interrupting drag uh reading hours and libraries and see this is the issue i always say well you know i saw all the commotion about that more it's more of a one-off you are correct but why are they talking about um uh proud boys going into these um drag reading hours and disrupting them that's worse for the kids i mean they're seeing out and out racists come into their little happy reading hour and disrupting with hateful language and hateful speech and the the these drag reading hours are are being targeted by proud boys which in turn are are making some of the libraries having to cancel them because they are they fear that the these people will interrupt them and that's really that's sickening um that that you know the same people who are going out there condemning jews and black people are trying to um are trying to call out in in the most horrific ways drag queens in front of children it's really um it's really appalling and i think it just shows the the the danger in trying um to use uh somebody like a drag queen as a political wedge issue because what that does is stir up hate and when the hate is stirred up then these um these facets groups these racist groups follow and and that's the tragedy of the whole thing i think it's it's gone too far when when something like that happens um what do you think about um okay i'm not super familiar with this issue but i'm gonna so i might get some things wrong but um apparently there was a bill i think introduced in california that made learning about drag queens and drag shows mandatory in school did you hear about this that was introduced yeah but again i you know it's hard to take something like that serious um nobody going back to what i keep saying this being a drag queen is not a political issue and nobody wants to force people to think about drag queens and so um to me this is just trying um to match uh the hate on the other side by putting up another bill that makes the whole thing a wash i just you know nobody the governor of california is not going to sign a bill well it won't be passed that makes it mandatory to learn about drag shows i mean that's ludicrous on the same end is why would uh what's going on with making them uh some bills are out there to try to make them illegal same thing i mean these are two way extremes it's not about drag queens it's about entertaining children and giving them an uh a a new way of learning and of having fun and engaging and engaging in a story okay let me see what else i have here that we haven't covered um do you think there's room for i guess nuance in the debate so that drag shows are fine you can say because there are very conservative people in america you can say you know what drag has been around forever it's entertainment drag shows are fine however we can borrow it from children and put it in the same category as more adult entertainment and that's reasonable do you think that's something that both sides could agree on well uh drag shows or drag reading hours are not adult entertainment so there's a huge difference there and i've talked to drag queens who do uh drag reading hours they they go and do their drag show where they have all their fun and ripping on the crowd and you know being you know being crazy and then they have where they read to children it's not a when the when they drag queen is reading in front of children it's not about entertainment and so that's a it's a huge huge misnomer they're not in the library being rivaled and dancing around they're reading a story to kids and they're making it fun for them so so you talk about the nuance you know at the end of the day it's up to the parent that the parent is not comfortable sending a child to a drag reading out then don't do it um but but but don't go and try to you know make maybe this sounds a little harsh and brash but keep your nose in your own business there are parents who think it's great go in there and they and they sit with the kids they're dropping the kids off and then leaving them there alone with a drag queen you know that's what the what the these parents who are against that wants you to think that somehow this drag queen is brainwashing these kids about being a drag queen that's not it at all the parents the drag queen makes it just as fun for the parents reading the book you know they they have um it's interactive so um if but if you're strongly against it and you don't want your kids uh to be there then then don't send them there that's your decision nobody's gonna tell you you have to do it just do it that's your decision keep them at home but let the people who would love to have their children experience lots of fun and entertainment with the drag queen and then let them do it it's a parent's decision okay okay um do you think i guess last question that kind of goes in that direction do you think that um the idea of having drag queen story time is because of what a drag queen represents is kind of hyper sexual just by itself whether or not they're doing the show is it not kind of hypersexual for kids no it's it's not i mean kids aren't you know i i i when i wrote a column about this initially i talked to uh my friend david berta who married to neil patrick harris and they have two kids and um you know they were uh their kids are terrific kids just terrific kids but you know david talked about um the fact that they're fine with letting their kids uh be with drag queens so long as they're not rude or raunchy and you know the kids got a different exposure to it because their dad neil patrick harris starred in kinky boots so they took them to kinky boots and you know they explained to the kids that the drag is a celebration of life it's about embracing differences and that's that's what it is and so they saw their dad in it and then they thought it was fun you know um they weren't telling the kids you know uh they weren't making it sexual they were making the fact of what honest to god is it's just entertainment and i think that's really important is that it's not sexualized in any way unless the parent makes it sexualized now going back to that david and neil produced the uh a drag film for hbo called wigs and yeah that's about drag shows it's about drag queen but they don't want their kids to see that that's not for kids it's for adults so yes they take them to a drag reading hour they'll take their dads they'll take them what's your dad be um kinky boots but they they didn't let the kids watch wigs because wigs is not for children okay so do you think it's possible that um the more conservative media is just hyper fixating on certain examples um and that's blowing making things look skewed yes i i totally agree with you on that that's what it is it's a political issue um there are you said it there are people who are afraid of men dressing up like women and acting crazy and um you know that's look not here to judge anybody if like they said if a parent doesn't want their children around it then they don't need to be there they can make the decision it's very simple um at the same at the same time if a parent wants to go to with their child to a drag reading hour they should be able to do that and they should be able to have fun and they shouldn't have to be protested and they shouldn't have to be interrupted by proud boys it's something that's specifically done for kids it's not it's not some wild raunchy show it's a simple nice way for kids to have a good time it just so happens that the drag queen okay um let me see what else do i have to cover that covered quite a bit and thank you again for coming on oh sure i'm glad i could talk about this i feel like um i think you had some really good questions so i appreciate that thanks uh let me see there was one more thing i wanted to ask let me see if i can remember it sure okay yeah oh one of so one of the things you hear in more conservative circles quite frequently is that these um drag reading hours are grooming children how do you feel about that assertion oh that is it's awful let me let me be really frank with you i was groomed by a priest okay and abused by a priest so i know what grooming is and when you're trying to put that label on somebody that's almost like calling them a murderer and that is wrong in every every facet of anything you can even bring that up that is wrong they are not grooming the children my god the parents are there and they're watching these with kids they're not grooming the kids and for anyone to use that word flippantly and particularly to a drag queen who's just reading a book is is wrong it's very very very dangerous and um it's downright evil when you have been groomed you know how horrible that is and when somebody goes out and throws the word grooming or pedophile and it is a it's wrong and a dangerous and all of that needs to stop and i'm worried that it isn't stopping i see marjorie taylor green on on twitter using those words it's um it's and it's horribly offensive to somebody who has been groomed okay thank you for sharing that okay okay one one more sure just looking at my list i'm like maybe one more um is there any type of argument within the lgtp sorry lgbtq community is there any argument about um whether or not drag reading time is appropriate for kids oh i'm sure there is i mean we're not like one um monolithic way of thinking so i almost certainly there's you know i they don't even have to be conservative i mean it's a it's a parent's choice whether you're a liberal conservative uh communist whatever you are independent it's your choice and some people don't feel comfortable with their kids in that with a drag queen reading hour that that's fine that's your decision and yeah so within the lgbt community i'm sure that um that there are parents you know two moms or two dads who say you know that's not for my kids and that's fine just like it would be for a straight parent that's fine if you feel that way but don't go labeling these people wrongly by calling them a groomer and pedophile don't be protesting them um you know don't be don't try to marginalize them but that's the wrong thing to do in the end it hurts kids because if kids think there's something wrong with that then you know you're you're already uh bringing an element of discrimination if you don't want to take your kids into that reading hour then just don't bring it up that's it okay is there anything else you want to cover that or quite any information you want out there that i haven't covered no i think you hit some really good questions i appreciate that um and i you know you're i'm i appreciate the fact that you're looking at it from the other side so um and give you an opportunity to be able to explain it a little bit more so so people have more of an open mind and and understand it more rather than just lashing out so and may i say one more thing if you have the opportunity to meet a drag queen go meet them because you're gonna find that they're just a human being just like you and i i love it okay well thank you very much john for coming on if people want to follow you online is there anywhere they can go yeah i'm on twitter um and then i uh you can just push the the advocate lgbtq john casey and i have a link to all my columns on there okay great thank you very much again well thank you it was really nice to meet you okay have fun in florida i am okay bye-bye now this episode is sponsored by nordvpn if you followed the show for a while then you probably already know because i've complained about it a lot how bad canadian netflix is i mean netflix has just been bad recently i think uh but at least it has variety in america and if you're in the states now like me you could use nordvpn to find out exactly what i mean we actually just had one of our debit cards hacked in an egyptian airport then i started getting these egyptian fees and egyptian electronic payments going through my debit card because my assistant used my debit card when he was in an airport and because he wasn't using something like nordvpn which he uses now so nordvpn can be very useful especially if you're traveling in areas where there can be hackers around trying to grab your information you should check them out i use nordvpn to also watch the best shows in netflix anywhere in the world from canada now that i live in miami i don't use nordvpn to watch good netflix shows but no matter where i go i do like to safeguard my online activity especially when traveling nordvpn's state of the art encryption protects you from third parties who want to watch what you're doing online it also protects you from hackers malware and any malicious people who might want to track your online activity nordvpn's a simple way to guarantee your privacy and keep you safe online it's super easy to start using it's fast it's not slow i've used a lot of vpns and a lot of them just slow down your internet enough that it's not worth using a vpn they're not like that you can grab your exclusive nordvpn deal by going to nordvpn.com tmpp nordvpn.com tmpp to get a huge discount off your nordvpn plan plus four months for free and it's completely risk-free with nord's 30-day money-back guarantee so sign up for nordvpn and enjoy the rest of this episode and be nice brian slayton welcome to my podcast thank you for having me and i'm happy to be here so before we get started can you give a brief background about who you are and what it is you do okay say my name is brian slaton i will start with this a wonderful wife and two lovely kids at home she's almost six months old and a little boy that is four years old um before that my background i was in the ministry i was a youth and family minister and uh then winded up i got my bachelor's and master's there and went back to school got my accounting degree and got interested involved with politics and then now i'm a state representative i have not even completed my first term but i've found myself fighting on culture issues that i just believe are the right stance to take okay great uh well we're discussing drag shows in this episode because those have been all over the news and there's the country is split on their opinion about whether or not these are good for people so i'm going to run through a couple of questions and see how you feel about this first of all do you know like can you explain what drag shows are and where they started yeah i mean they started uh you know in in the gay community right men dressing up as women uh and and it's a characterization of woman just in the sexual nature and materialistic uh you know big hair makeup a big dress and then the sexual side and you know it's probably been part of the community a very long time now as far as when it you know officially started you know i i don't know i'm guessing from things i've read around 100 years ago but here's the problem is drag shows have gone on they've you know have always probably been around in some form or fashion but now what we're seeing is this drag shows been normalized in our culture we're seeing them more and more on television and commercials and your kids can see them on television and commercials and now what we're this issue at hand here is drag shows in front of children and uh you take something that was you know in the past was secretive and they weren't proud of it wasn't out in the open um and now not only is it normalized in society but now it's being even forced to where they want you to accept grown men dancing in their underwear in front of children and then putting dollar bills in the grown men's underwear and that's where we've we've come and it's it hasn't it's not what it once was it was just something that uh gay men did and behind closed doors but now it's being pushed down onto our children and um okay so do you think children should be attending drag shows well not at all i mean we don't have we don't let children in texas attend uh strip clubs with a stripper i mean that we have laws to protect children already from adults who intend bad things for them or to sexualize them and so uh this is nothing but sexualizing the child um and it shouldn't be a foreign idea to us right i mean you look at human trafficking and the problem that is well that's a large contingent of that is adults wanting to have sex with children and then now with the drag in front of children they're not say taking just the sexual qualities of a woman putting those on display in front of children and one of those children to touch them and interact with them and um and you know we want kids to maintain their innocence we want kids to um know right and wrong and know when they're you know safe and know when they're in jeopardy and what we have happening with the drag queens is we're teaching them that it's okay to be around a man dancing this way in his underwear and it's okay for you to touch him right but then two months later another man has him alone is doing the same thing we want that kid concerned we want that kid saying no no this shouldn't be happening i need to tell someone but we're we're literally trying to teach these kids that it's normal and okay to have adults treat you this way and it it's inappropriate for their behavior and it's unethical to sexualize children that is true um do you think that there's any chance that people who do these drag shows think that they're just trying to i guess get children used to the idea of the lgtpq community so that they're less prejudiced when they grow up oh sure it's it's all of that it's trying to let the kids i guess be accepting and they think as the kids get older they'll be more accepting and and but it's it's more than just that um you take nambla north north american association of man boy love or man boy love association namlo they've been around for 25 30 years or more actually but as the lgbtq movement when it hadn't always been known that but known as that but whenever they've tried to advance things whether it's same-sex marriage whether it's whatever they've tried to advance nabla has always been a part of their movement and they've been wanting to normalize adult men relationship with adult voice that's their goal that's why they exist and they're a part of these movements and during those times you had people in the gay community going no no no we want to advance this but we don't want anything to do with people that are taking advantage of children they always really try to distance themselves from nambu but here we are now in our culture and our society and we don't see uh an active push to distance themselves from namla and in fact they're you know criticize me and others because we don't want children to be exposed to adults that are doing all this sexual stuff um but yeah they want them to be accepted and they also want them to participate and then i would say even the end goal is they're wanting these children to then go and do gender modification surgeries i don't think they're content with accepting i believe over the past 20 years 25 years if we've seen their movement progress by and large society's been accepted the church has been accepting they've like say they're normalized good good luck finding a sitcom that doesn't have an lgbtq character and all this right so we've been accepting but they keep pushing and then uh you know that that's the goal they're they're not just wanting to accept they're wanting us to engage in fact we had this happen on the house floor when we were discussing boys participating in girls college sport or no high school sports and we had members of the democrat party that were upset with me and others because we were using the words male and female during this conversation they wanted us to use cis male and cis female and so it wasn't agreed to disagree it wasn't uh you know this is what we believe we want you to accept and we'll move on no they wanted us to change our vocabulary to match theirs and uh so there i mean you can say it's acceptance but i believe that's just the foot and the door of of the movement and what they're trying to do they're trying to normalize every bit of it now not all of them are you know not all every person in the lgbtq community is trying to normalize adult child relationships but there's a contingent in there that is and right now i'm not seeing people distance themselves and also where do you draw that line right i'm saying kids shouldn't be around drag queens and you know in a drag show and all that well if they say it's okay well where do you draw that line if a man can dance in women's underwear kids put dollar bills in their underwear then when is it wrong for an adult to do sexual things with the child and they don't answer the question do you think there's any type of consensus in that lgbtq community about whether or not children should be allowed to attend drag shows do you think this is just one small portion of it or do you think this is kind of an overarching theme well i don't know how big it is but i know it's not all i mean whenever i put out this idea the bill i do we got calls from people in the homosexual community had a guy call hey i'm a homosexual from dallas i just want you to know i agree with you children should be around drag queens i mean they're not unified on this because as i've said there are people in the homosexual community that's always tried to distance themselves from the pedophiles the namla but right now not many are doing it we got people you know calling and telling us they support us but they know if they come out publicly on social media they're gonna get absolutely blown up by their own side by their own you know their own group because they want all or nothing and so but they're not unified um what would you say to people who say that the the idea that the lgbtq community has um a tendency towards pedophilia that's just right-wing propaganda well like i said not all right um but there are some i mean the existence of nam north american man boy love association you can read on their website they've had for a long time they want to normalize relationships with children they've been a part of every movement the gay or lgbtq movement has had they're there and it in through history and recent history they people distance themselves from them but they're still there and so um like i say it is not all but here's here's my point michaela so let's pretend and just say no one right no one in drag is a pedophile let's just pretend that's the reality well what they're teaching children and how they're grooming children uh and and how to the children is supposed to respond to the way these adults are dancing and interacting with them it is not appropriate for the child if the child was in front of a female stripper it's not appropriate as i mentioned with human trafficking you got men trying to have children and just straight up pedophiles that's all wrong i mean that is absolutely all wrong and the idea of the drag queen dancing this way in front of a child and you know the depiction and characterization of a woman you would think would offend the left right it only take basically two qualities of a woman and they're saying hey kid look this is what a woman is and you need to accept this and celebrate this and it's not a great characterization not a full character depiction of what a woman is and um [Music] and the thing is they're leading these kids to a doorstep right they're leading these kids to things that are bad these kids may not have the red flags up if adults are trying bad things with them so like say let's pretend that they they don't have any pedophiles the problem is is they're grooming they're they're helping these kids uh lower uh lower their guard towards somebody who really does want to harm them so i don't see how that's a good thing uh just in that aspect what they're they're leading kids down a path towards okay so that's that's drag shows what about uh the drag queen story time that you've heard i know that in toronto that was i think they put it on at the zoo right so what about those events i think it's inappropriate for children the drag queen exists from a sexual nature that's what it's the drag queen is for they only take basically two qualities of a woman and and they don't they don't focus on intelligence they don't focus on work ethic they don't focus on anything nurturing they don't focus on just the sexual and the materialistic side and so why would we want to teach kids that's what a woman is why would we want to do that and besides that what what would be the benefit to having a female stripper sit down and read to the kids that her her job she makes money stripping why does that somehow make her better at reading books or the kids learn more she's in a sexually oriented oriented business the drag queen is it's sexually oriented it has no place around children so see how it's appropriate so you promise to file legislation to protect children from drag shows can you give us a bit of a description about what that bill's about yeah well to be honest with you we don't know if it's going to be one bill or four bills i mean we're just trying to figure out where and how to do it in texas to stop this from happening as i've mentioned we have it in texas law where you know kids can't go to sexually oriented oriented businesses they can't go in liquor stores they can't go in bars they can't buy cigarettes etc there's a lot of protections for kids so we want to add right now if kids were to have a stripper dance in front of them it would be a crime strippers in texas have to have some type of license and because they're sexually oriented in their business so i'm simply wanting to just add the drag queen shows into what we already have in law which is classifying sexually or sexually oriented businesses and keeping children from being around them so i don't know if that's going to be some type of you know getting a license or just saying hey kids you know can't participate we don't know we're still working on it but the goal is is is to stop this apparently uh the way the law is written a man can dance in his underwear in front of kids and have them stuff dollar bills in their underwear but i mean that's apparently legal in texas and we need to stop that just as we've done it with women that would try to dance in front of or i guess men wearing men's underwear i guess the loophole might be that a man's wearing women's underwear i guess i don't know why but we had no sheriffs no law enforcement trying to stop this at any point in time okay and is that because specifically drag shows aren't classified as a strip show they just were never written in maybe because this was never an issue before that's right i mean yeah it was never an issue it was never thought of hey let's do this in front of children and it will be okay it will be accepted you know it was never thought that until now we're like i say the the the drag queen is a part of our society and culture and in our shows and commercials i mean everywhere and so now it's just they're just pushing the envelope more to more and more what they want they don't want to just accept it in society they want it in our interface i mean in fact right after i said i was going to file this piece of legislation there was a an elected official in california said they wanted to make drag queens mandatory curriculum in the schools they want more than just you know observing a a drag queen shift they wanted mandatory participation in school what do you think parents are thinking when they bring children to these events that's a good question so the way i described this because i was a youth and family minister and and what i see parents um you know they want their kid to get through high school be 18 years old going to college and they don't want to have a physical scar an emotional scar a psychological scar i mean they don't right parents want to protect their kids from everything they don't want their kid to even have a broken heart right they they don't want a girlfriend or boyfriend to break up with and and uh of course we look at our society where they all have to have trophies right everyone wins they don't know what it's like to lose and and so uh you know one thing i've asked to help explain this is imagine i show up to your city any city and i want to get a permit to do some type of parade bike ride and the bike ride is called the good old days background only children can participate and they're not allowed to wear helmet elbow pads or knee pads do you think that city is going to give me a permit definitely not no they are not but you take any of the lgbtq movement and you're gonna get pushback that the gender modification of children right it's irreversible they're okay with it but they don't want the kid to ride on a bike without their knee pads elbow pads helmet and then you got the drag queen which is a a characterization of a woman highly sexualized and we don't want our children to be exposed to pedophiles we don't want our child to be exposed to anything sexual we don't want our our children um doing anything other than enjoying their childhood but they want this sexualization to go to be put on them and like like i've mentioned i don't understand why why even the left wants to take the depiction of a woman that a drag queen displays and show that to their kid and say this is what a woman is i don't see how how they want that so back to parents you know why would a parent find it so important for their child to be around this and and and some of it comes down to this um is some parents try to live through their children um i think a lot of things that happen you have parents that have their own insecurities maybe they weren't as popular as they wanted to be in high school maybe they didn't have the boyfriend or girlfriend they wanted um who knows what it could be and those parents take their children they try to live through their their children and in some cases you could have parents that are trying to push this on their child so that when they go to brunch they can brag to their friends that their child is lgbtq or their child is accepting of drag queens and they feel like somehow that's you know a one-up on everybody there's people talking about maybe a new car a new house or a new job and they're like oh yeah well you know they use it as a bragging right because it's about their insecurities um so that would be one possibility um the other thing i think there's some parents who who just don't understand how dangerous it is to sexualize a child whether it's towards the lgbtq or sexualize them towards a you know heterosexual pedophile right i mean it it's both wrong and bad on that child and and so why they do it i don't fully know the answer i haven't also heard parents say you know how dare you say i can't take my child to a drag queen and also if i want to take my kid in a strip club y'all better repeal that law so we can do that too so they're only doing it for one thing and it's in the drag queen they're not trying to do it anywhere else they don't want the freedom and liberty to do it in any other situation so i think it has more to do with their ideology they support the lgbtq movement they want to advance it everywhere they can um and and so that that's that's what's driving this and and yeah it's a yeah that's all i can say is there there's probably a lot of reasons but it has mostly to do with their own insecurities and they're just it's ideology you know their ideology is sensitive to the lgbtq movement okay um so in your opinion should drag shows be banned altogether or should they just be limited to 18 or 21 what do you think would be reasonable for the future so my bill simply said keep drag shows away from children what i'm trying to work on i'm not trying to end drag shows altogether um i mean do they need to exist well that's another you know as far as the direct shows and everything in in our society hey somebody somebody can have that conversation i just see uh the need to protect children is all i'm doing now what age do we put that at 18 or 21 i mean that's up to debate really because when a child turns 18 uh they could go you know um well actually just now in texas we changed the law to where it's 20 you have to be 21 years old to work in strip club so i guess now as of last september i guess it would probably be more appropriate to move it to 21 to treat them all treat all that sexually oriented business the same um but you know at 18 the kids could go you know do all the cosmetic surgery for the gender modification they could you know dance they they could put on a dress they could go wherever they want you know they're adults but in texas we we do now have a law saying 21 so i mean right now i guess everything would lean towards 21 but open to discussion um what what can a parent do if they don't want their kid to see drag or be exposed to kind of this ideology you're going to see it everywhere you see it in commercials depends on where you are apparently like say from what we've learned if you attend school in california you may want to consider pulling your kid out of school there in california because there's a guy there that wants to make it mandatory curriculum um uh you're just going to have to one just don't drive them there if there's a show but uh but the problem is is uh i say it's been a part of the plan part of the process to normalize this as we see it more and more in tv we have to worry about the books your kids are reading um i live east of dallas in in east texas we have all those books all the porn books are in all the school districts in my district it's not an urban problem it's not a california problem it's everywhere so parents are just gonna have to be on guard if you want to protect your kid help them maintain their innocence and just enjoy their childhood grow up be ready to be a good productive adult you're going to have to protect them bottom line protect them and you're going to have to look at everything minimize online minimize or cut out social media things like that what kind of books are you talking about so uh we found books and libraries in rural all over texas but in my district that um some of the books depict adult child sex adult child you know oral sex even you know lgbtq i mean all sexualization of children even you know child child sex i mean it's just totally inappropriate um you know it's it's books that if if you or i took somewhere else and showed a kid we'd probably go to jail but the schools have them in their library and kids could be reading these checking these out and once again it's it's all in the same nerve i mean you got the the books that are basically porn you got drag queens wanting to perform in front of the children and then you got the gender modification of children it's all the same thing they're all trying to sexualize the child and do so before they're an adult and and i'll just say this real quick i know you asked about the books um what i've asked people if we've been discussing this issue with children um with the gender modification i guess with that one is you know the question i always like to ask or back when i was in the ministry uh i'd ask people is what if you're wrong what if i'm wrong and so you know 10 years from now if we all look back and and decide that you know let's say you know my side was wrong that kids shouldn't be sexualized shouldn't go through gender modification if we're wrong the worst case scenario is that child has to wait till they're 18 to go through and do all that surgeries go through you know go be a drag queen whatever they'd have to wait till they're 18. the other side what if they're wrong if they're wrong there's no going back if that child wind up getting gender modification surgery you don't reverse that that child's life is forever on a a different path never go back and the sexualization of children i mean there's a lot of things uh that once you get the child so focused on sex and in their guard down anything could happen they could get caught up in human trafficking as a sex slave they could become you know pregnant as a child uh there's just so many things can happen and uh if if they're wrong and if if i'm wrong well you just gotta wait till you're 18 which is what we want for kids with a lot of things so but these books um they just are part of the same nerve uh of sexualizing our children why do you think this has made it into the schools specifically like why is it that part of society that seems to be pushing this that is a good question um well you know as we as children develop and grow um and you you shape them into how they think that's how they'll be you know as they get older i've always told parents that and i've told teenagers this that by the age of 12 13 14 if you haven't figured out how to be an honest person um they're gonna you know tell the truth that you're you're gonna be moral if you you know those type of things that's who you're gonna be if if by the time you're 14 more than likely and so it's very important that as kids as very young kids that they you train them and you teach them how to live how to think how to be moral how to be ethical because then they will continue to do that so then there's people who uh as we mentioned earlier with acceptance they think hey if we can get these children to believe it's okay for an adult to act this way with them well then as they get older they'll accept all of them and it'll be a world to be a happy place but um but that's what they would be doing they'd be teaching children uh this sexual um aspect and sexual nature and as that kid gets or older that's gonna be their focus and so um so it's kind of a it's a fight for our a battle for our youth battle for the children because they're going to determine what our society is and so um and so they think i guess they think that's that's where they want to win the battle because if we raise children to be moral and ethical we raise children to know right and wrong we raise children to know that adults should not do sexual things with children they can't win that conversation with the 25 year old but if that at eight years old the child's taught it's okay then that child is 25 i mean so that yeah i i guess and they're doing in school because that they're trying to win the battle 10 years from now how do you think it's appropriate to teach kids you know so so i i would assume from that angle they're saying what they're saying anyway is we need to expose kids to these ideas so they grow up like you said and aren't bigoted or aren't prejudiced um do you think there's an appropriate way to teach kids so that they don't end up prejudiced that doesn't involve this kind of hypersexualization sure it's from a christian worldview i mean uh the bible teaches us right and wrong the bible teaches us god's plan and that he made male and female bible teaches us that also teaches us to be loving to others um and so uh uh yeah i mean we've been doing it and and yes there's been some bad actors right there's been people do bad things but guess what we live in a fallen world people do evil things but that doesn't mean that god is flawed doesn't mean that you know christianity's flawed because one person you know or however many make a bad decision so so we we teach kids how to treat others we teach kids what god expects of us and who we are because that's a lot of this is in the lgbtq movement they're teaching these children that you know they're not teaching them god made you and made you perfect the way you are they're saying if you think that you're something other that somehow it was a mistake let's fix that and and they're they're trying to go against um how god has made you i mean i saw this as a youth and family minister i saw girls uh in the youth group with blonde hair which they had dark and girls with dark hair which they have blonde hair and then you have curly hair and then straight hair and uh we haven't taught kids how to live with insecurities and how to be content with who you are um and and so we have to come at it with a biblical worldview in my opinion and um that's that's the way we do it um it's worked before and i'll also say this i worked at some rural country churches and there's always some old men there they would say you know uh these kids out here in the country you never had to teach them a sex ed class in school they figured it out from the animals you know i mean they they saw what happened they knew what happened and they were they got it neo parents talk to them but um but basically you know maybe maybe the church isn't doing a good job of of teaching you know i believe a lot of the problems we have in our culture all start with the lack of leadership we have in the pulpit in america i think a lot of people also that um aren't brought up uh with a christian background kind of scoff at it and just look at it as another type of ideology i think that's part of the problem um you mentioned you mentioned that the bible teaches people to love one another and that seems like it might be a good place to start right for acceptance is don't be hateful that's that's pretty much that's like that seems like a pretty good lesson just to begin with that everybody could learn from yeah i'll tell you this growing up um my family we worked in miss texas page uh most people wouldn't think that about me i'm in the hall of fame miss texas organization and that's mainly because i was big enough to carry bots but we were around a homosexual community working in that and um and like say i feel like i'm loving accepting i mean like i say have lots of people i know that are gay my thing is just keep it away from kids you know leave kids alone i don't care if you're heterosexual or homosexual or drag leave kids alone it's that simple and um but for some reason it's it's treated as taboo if you want to protect kids from drag when like i say the whole nature concept of drag is sexualization and so anyway it's wild that we're where we're at you know and and that just because you say you don't want kids to be around drag shows they think you know you you hate others no i don't um i just also believe god has a you know standard how he wants us to live our life everybody's got to answer for their decisions okay well that covers all the questions i had um if people want to learn more about you is there any place they can go online sure yeah you can find me on facebook you can find me on twitter uh brianforhd2 and then you can find me on my website at brianslayton.com okay great thank you very much for taking part in the supposing views thank you michaela for having me

Introducing John Casey

Differences Between Drag Shows and Drag Storytime

Should Kids Be Exposed to Drag Shows?

Its the Parents' Decision

Legislation to Restrict Drag Shows like Strip Clubs

The Recent Increase in Trans Youth and Ideology

The Parents' Roll in Minors Transitioning

Vaudeville: the History of Drag Shows in the United States

Kids Attending Drag Shows is Uncommon

The Politicization of Drag Queens

Celebrate Drag, but with Age Restrictions

Drag is Not Innately Sexual

Bias in Conservative Media

Grooming

LGBTQ Disagreements About the Appropriateness of Drag Storytime

Similarities Between Drag Shows and Strip Clubs

Closing Comments with John Casey

Introducing Bryan Slaton

The History of Drag Shows and How Drag has Gone Too Far

Tolerance: a Pretense for Normalization

Consensus About Drag Shows in the LGBTQ Community

Concerns About Pedophilia

The Appropriateness of Drag Queen Storytime for Kids

Legislation Protecting Kids from Drag Shows in Texas

Why Drag is an Issue Now

The Actions of Parents

Age Requirements for Attending Drag Shows

Parents' Difficulties Avoiding Drag in Pop Culture

Gender Modification: What if You're Wrong?

Public Schools: a Battleground for the Future

An Appropriate Way to Teach Kids

Loving One Another

Closing Comments with Bryan Slayton