Pride Comes for the Kids

The appalling effort to sexualize kids by progressive LGBT activists accelerated this past week when the world learned of a “Drag Your Kids to Pride” event being held at Mr. Misster, a gay nightclub in Dallas. The event was billed as “family friendly,” and it was obviously targeted to kids and their parents. But as you can imagine for a drag show at a gay bar targeting kids, the obscenities on display are almost too shameful to print. The event included a large neon sign on stage that read, “It’s not going to lick itself,” in front of which men in women’s swimsuits, and sometimes less, gyrated for an audience that included very young minors.

The event began to trend on Twitter when concerned individuals from the community showed up outside to protest, which led to an ideological clash on the streets of Dallas. On one side were parents and other adults who were “dragging” their kids to a sodomite establishment to watch grown men perform sexually perverted dances, and on the other side were those who were rightly condemning not only the event, but those who would darken the doors of such vile debasement.

Sounds awful, right?

The sexualization of the youngest children in our society is not only awful, but downright wicked and evil, from the Devil himself. But if recent headlines are any indication, this is exactly what this month of “Pride” celebration has become. The website Fatherly, a publication devoted to articles on parenting, recently ran an article titled, “Yes, You Should Take Your Kids to a Pride Parade (But Have These Conversations First).” And last year, The Washington Post ran a now-infamous article, “Yes, Kink Belongs at Pride. And I Want My Kids to See It.” These two articles are only a drop in the bucket of more and more Pride-themed content being directed at kids today, from formerly family-friendly organizations like Disney to radical LGBT organizations like GLAAD.

Alarmed? You almost certainly aren’t alarmed enough.

Already, the skids are being greased for pedophilia to be included in the alphabet soup that is the LGBTQIA2S+ movement. Earlier this year, USA Today published an article that introduced readers to the term “minor-attracted people” (MAP). Titled, “The Complicated Research Behind Pedophilia,” this article argued that pedophilia is a psychological disorder that should be treated as such. Anyone who has paid attention to the evolution of LGBT issues over the years in the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — which functions as a kind of bible for psychiatrists — knows that both homosexuality and transgenderism were both once considered disorders. That was before these practices became more acceptable to the culture, after which the DSM no longer labeled them as disorders. We have no reason to expect anything different for MAPs.

Today more than ever, evangelicals must be vocal in our advocacy against the sexualization and fetishization of children. This should be an issue that unites complementarians and egalitarians. At a moment when evangelical denominations are addressing sexual abuse, we must take seriously protecting the most vulnerable among us — our kids. This means having moral clarity about a disgusting event like “Drag Your Kids to Pride” because drag shows for kids is an issue of sexual abuse — sexual abuse of the youngest members of our society.

Jesus’ words couldn’t be stronger in Luke 17:1–2, words that are directly applicable to this issue:

“And he said to his disciples, ‘Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.’”

Let us make every effort that temptations to sin would not come through what we endorse, or through what we fail to condemn. And that includes the celebration of Pride, which ought to be the easiest vice for Christians to denounce, as C. S. Lewis reminds us:

“The essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison. It was through pride that the Devil became the Devil: Pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind.”