December 11, 2019 (Family Research Council) — If it's okay for drag queens to host story hour, what about prostitutes? At one Austin, Texas elementary school, students got both! In what some parents are calling "a sign of things to come" under the city's radical new sex ed, the kids at Blackshear Fine Arts Academy had an unexpected visitor — with an even more unexpected background. But as shocked as parents were to learn that "Miss Kitty Litter ATX" was a convicted criminal, they were even more horrified to find out that the school district knew it!

That's the most astonishing revelation from the open records request that Texas Values filed. Thanks to internal communications between Miss Kitty Litter (real name David Richardson) and the school librarian Roger Grape, moms and dads now know that not only did Blackshear expose their children to this wild and deviant ideology but to a felon too! In texts to Grape, David admitted that he might not pass the school background check. "[T]he guidelines for submission automatically disqualify me if the deferred adjudication for prostitution is considered a conviction... so I don't know if [it's] ethical to submit."

So either the school didn't go through with the background check — or ignored it altogether. Either option is equally distressing. "According to emails sent to parents," Texas Values points out, "the reading event was scheduled to take place at 11 a.m. and all readers had been screened by Austin ISD." No one knows what that screening could've possibly entailed, since an arrest and conviction are the first things a basic search would uncover. Or maybe Austin officials don't see the problem in bringing in a man who sells himself for sex as an acceptable guest speaker. Based on their latest curriculum decisions, which are stunningly pornographic, it wouldn't surprise us.

Just as startling, the records from the October 7th day when Richardson came to school show that neither he nor the school were in any hurry for him to leave. Dressed head-to-toe as a woman, he walked through the doors at 7:25 a.m. and didn't leave until the bell almost rang at 2:11 p.m. Why was he there for so long? No one seems to know. Maybe he did more than read to the first-, second-, third-, and fourth-graders. Maybe he was consulting on the recently adopted lessons about anal sex ("What's the best way to have it?") or contraception ("What ages you can get birth control, abortions, or other health care without your parents").

Unfortunately for the moms and dads in the area, this isn't their first brush with the extreme. On the Willis side of the district, a man with the stage name Lynn Adonis also visited class — this time as a guest cosmetologist. There's just one problem: he isn't one. He's an entertainer — and a drag queen one at that. Like Richardson, he spent twice as much time at the school as other visitors that day. When the inviting teacher was asked, she admitted that Jerred Bridges (his legal name) spent the day putting make-up on kids, "despite having no license to do so."

Usually, the fact that a district is willing to host one of these drag queen events is sickening enough. Imagine finding out that the person they invited wasn't even vetted — or worse, a confirmed sex trafficker. Schools are supposed to be safe learning spaces, not a catwalk for prostitutes. Their actions would suggest that Austin officials are more interested in the sexual exploitation of kids than their actual wellbeing. In any classroom, including this one, the only thing these drag queens should be reading are the directions to the nearest exit.

Published with permission from the Family Research Council.

Dec. 23, 2019 correction: A previous version of this report stated that the drag queen's name was David Robinson when it is actually David Richardson. This has now been corrected.