Julia Dawn Seaver encourages area residents to offer their input to the Board of Trustees

Imagine a community library filled with toddlers and young children for story hour. The storyteller, a man, garishly dressed as a woman, more accurately a caricature of a woman, reads tales of gender identity and fluidity.

There’s singing and dancing, maybe a craft making crowns or having the children create their own drag name and choosing their pronouns. Because why settle for the dreary ‘he’ or ‘she’ when you can have ze/zir/ey/em or they. ‘They’ as in more than one child? No silly, for the children who can’t decide if they’re a boy or a girl. Sound like something out of the Twilight Zone? I used to think so too, but Rod Serling is nowhere to be found.

Welcome to Drag Queen Story Hour, coming to a location near you, namely, the Vancouver Community Library, which held the event Saturday. According to the library, “Inclusion, diversity, and equity are integral components of public libraries, and offering LGBTQIA+ affirming programs like Drag Queen Story Hour are a vital part of making our library and our community a welcoming space for all children and families.” Inclusion and diversity are good, right? Of course. But we’re supposed to believe the best way to teach them is by introducing children to drag culture?

There are clear examples of why it’s a very bad idea. Now that children are being introduced to drag culture, some are joining in and becoming ‘drag kids,’ performing in Pride parades and drag shows. Two of the more well-known kids were in the news recently, one for dancing in a gay bar while men threw money at him, and the other for posing with a naked drag queen. These are 10- and 11-year old children.

With programs like this, in addition to expanding gender identity “education” in schools and online influences, instead of being encouraged to be gender non-conforming in the healthy body they have, increasing numbers of children are being pushed onto puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, sterilization, and irreversible body-mutilating surgery. Girls as young as 13 are having mastectomies and hysterectomies, sometimes without parental consent. This, despite the fact that 80-95 percent will change their minds before adulthood if they’re allowed to go through puberty.

You can provide feedback by contacting the library or at the next Board of Trustees public meeting Feb. 19.

Julia Dawn Seaver

Vancouver