From my earliest childhood, I attended the Mummer’s Parade in Philadelphia every New Year’s Day, watching husky fellows with banjos, full-face makeup and glitter sashay down Broad Street.
It’s a tradition that, while difficult to explain to out-of-towners, is near and dear to our Quaker City hearts.
I also had a platonic crush on Geraldine, the Flip Wilson character with the fabulous hair and legs that looked better on him than on practically every woman I’ve ever encountered.
I even had a vague and extremely brief passing interest in Ru Paul, who mainstreamed the whole idea of men stealing their wives’ lingerie and prancing around in public.
But I draw the line at Drag Queen Story Hour.
Several years ago I wrote the following when our local library decided to set up just one such event: “No child should be forced to confront radical ideas and controversial social movements before they are able to use the potty by themselves … This is a time when the little ones should be held in their mothers’ laps, sipping chocolate milk or juice, or for the more boring, water, from their sippy cups and become mesmerized by the magic of carefully chosen words. This is not a time when some man in spandex, tulle and glitter should be confusing them with the sight of a dude with an Adam’s apple and well-developed biceps touching up his makeup and hitching up his brassiere.”
That opinion was not appreciated in 2019. It is likely not going to be appreciated today, even in the wake of some radical shifts in our conception of what a woman really is.
But I still feel the same way: Children should not be guinea pigs in our adult social experiments, which brings me up to 2025.
The Philadelphia Zoo canceled plans to hold an animal-themed Drag Queen Story Hour — my lord, the jokes write themselves — in honor of Pride Month. The official reason that was given involved safety concerns.
I actually doubt that this was the case. It’s highly unlikely that cross-dressing Miss Rachaels would pose a serious threat to the public.
I think it has more to do with the idea that the zoo is on private property, owned by the Philadelphia Zoological Society, and some of the board members agree with me that the only sort of queens little toddlers should be exposed to are floating around at Disney World, or in some enchanted forest.
That’s not bigotry, although I expect the “homophobe” accusations will come out flying.
No matter how evolved you want to be, no 3-year-old should have to figure out why the person who sounds like Daddy but looks and smells like Mommy — unless Mommy is a fashion misfit like yours truly — is reading them a story about rainbows and unicorns.
We might think that it would wash right over their heads and that they would just enjoy hearing the stories.
But given the increasing willingness to allow children to define their own gender identity at increasingly earlier stages, I’m not so sure this isn’t adults trying to graft their own priorities onto children.
I had a problem years ago when the Boy Scouts were sued by the city of Philadelphia because they would not allow openly gay Scouts or Scout leaders to be members.
My point then, and my point now, is that there are environments where sexual orientation and gender identification are entirely irrelevant to the mission, especially if that mission involves children.
Learning how to light a campfire or tie a square knot is legitimate kid stuff. Learning about Peppa Pig’s pronouns, is not.
So the whole zoo hullabaloo is just another example of adults trying to insert themselves into the magical world of children.
Or to paraphrase Geraldine, “The devil if you make me do it!”
Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times in Pennsylvania. Her column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
