So called “Drag Queen Story Hours” have been coming to a library near us, forcing us to begin thinking more precisely how to express our opposition to them in a way that, beginning from shared reasons, could appeal to the secular world. The issue hit especially close to home when my wife found that our local branch intends to (and likely will) host such a story hour. My wife sent a brief note to the library director in protest, expecting back a rather generic “thank you for your email. It has been noted and placed in circular filing.” Instead, she was surprised to find a relatively long email sent back; long that is, in text, not ideas. The ideas expressed were relatively simple. The library had to host the drag queen story hour because: “tolerance,” “acceptance,” and “inclusion,” and other such drivel.
On one hand, of course, the answer to such nonsense is quite simple. We are told multiple times in Scripture that we are made, as we are, in our maleness and femaleness by God Himself. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5), “male and female, He created them,” (Genesis 1:27), and the words of the Psalmist: You formed my inmost being you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am wonderfully made.” (Psalms 139:13-14). Our bodies are an inextricable part of us; they are given to us as a gift by God and, as such, represent a calling to be lived out. It is not for us to reject either the gift or calling, attempting to remake ourselves according to some other image or idea in our minds.
But, of course, it is not easy to cite Scripture to people so committed to a secular model, a fact that Thomas Aquinas recognized in many works, including his Summa Contra Gentiles. What other considerations, then, might be offered that might oppose such a story hour? How to answer the claim that drag queen story hours (or DQSH) are really about “tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion”?
The question is almost hard to take seriously enough to answer. Why is it necessary that a grown man in a dress, a wig, and an often terrifying amount of makeup, read stories to children? Even if the desire genuinely were to teach acceptance and tolerance, is there no other, better way to do so than to subject one’s children to stories read by such a person?
Of course, there are other, better ways to teach tolerance. But then, the DQSH’s are not about teaching tolerance and acceptance at all. Having a man in a wig and dress reading stories to children is not about promoting literacy, reading, tolerance, acceptance, or any other such disingenuous justification the promoters of such events try to use. They are about teaching something else altogether.
Those supporting the DQSH agenda are about teaching a particular ideology and about teaching it to children. It is an ideology that includes several main points:
Gender is separable from biological sex, rather than how men and women, in society, live out their biological sex.
That biological sex is assigned, rather than recognized, at birth.
That, because biological sex is assigned, as if arbitrarily, it is changeable and flexible.
That reality is dependent on our beliefs, rather than that our beliefs should be dependent on reality.
Hence, that a person can actually be born “in the wrong body.”
That if a person’s mind and body are out of line, should seek to bring the body into line with the mind, rather than the mind into line with the body.
DQSH’s are not about promoting “acceptance”; they are about teaching a particular ideology. And it is not hard to argue that this is not an ideology that libraries should not be promoting or teaching to children.
Too much of it is uncertain. Why should we believe or teach children that sex is something assigned at birth, like one is assigned to a team or group at school, rather than recognized at birth? Why introduce into a child’s head the idea that he (or she) is not a boy for any good reason except that some doctor or his parents randomly chose to assign him one sex rather than the other? Why introduce into his head the idea that, if this is the case, he might easily have been assigned to the wrong sex? Does he like drama, reading, and music? He might actually be a girl! Does a girl like sports and physical activity? She might actually be a boy! When children have enough uncertainties in childhood, why introduce this doubt into a child’s mind?
Why should we see gender as separable from biological sex, rather than how men and women live out their biological sex in society? Why think that a person can be born in the wrong body?
If the mind seems to believe one view of reality and the body seems to reflect another, why should we bring the body into line with the mind rather than the mind into line with the body? If a biological girl comes to believe she is “trapped in the wrong body,” and is really a boy, why try to change the body rather than the mind? If it is possible (as DQSH promoters believe) that a person can be trapped in the wrong body, is it possible for them to be wrong about being trapped in the wrong body? The existence of detransitioners those pushed to try to change their biological sex who later changed their minds, sure prove that people’s beliefs on this may be wrong. Other common evidence holds that 80-95% of children who experience discordant gender beliefs will, if not encouraged to do otherwise, will actually come to identify with their biological sex.
Human beings hold wrong beliefs all the time, what about trans beliefs make it impossible for them to be wrong? A teenage girl sees herself as grossly overweight and needing to lose weight dramatically. She starves herself and purges almost to the point of death. Do we “validate” her belief and agree she is indeed overweight? Or do we recognize that her belief does not align with reality? A perfectly healthy person believes he is really a disabled person trapped in a healthy person’s body. He wants to have a limb amputated in order to align his body with his mind. Do we do that? A boy believes he is really a girl and wants to mutilate himself in order to align his body with his mind. Do we do that?
And, of course, the answer in each case is that we do not. Gender ideology, the promotion of which is the real goal of the drag queen story hours, offers too much uncertainty, too much potential heartbreak and suffering, and too much that is plainly implausible to promote to children. A library, meant to be a neutral, public, source of information has no business promoting such an uncertain ideology to our children. Drag queen story hours have nothing to do with teaching acceptance or tolerance. It is time we stop trying to justify them by claiming that they do.
Would the concept of gender, as opposed to sex, be considered gnostic? I am not confident about what constitutes gnosticism, but I think I have read that it embraces a degraded view of the material world including the physical bodies of human beings. The Christian perspective does seem to confirm a hierarchy of constituent parts (that is, the soul is more important than the body), but it also asserts the integration of body and soul as fundamental to out nature as human beings and teaches us that both are good. If the division of a person's sex from his feeling of his sexed social role is indeed a form of gnosticism, how did Christians combat this heresy with arguments that could be followed and accepted by non-Christians?
You do not have to continue to respond, if the thread becomes tedious. I thought your response was good. Do you think, then, that what needs to be established is that the bodies of the people who are seeking transformation are actually healthy as they are? It seems right that medical procedures can be performed to help what is ill or lacking to become well and whole. The form of the soul is not corrupted or misinterpreted by such procedures (within limits). People with gender dysphoria seem to believe that their bodies are not conforming to the forms of their souls -- so do you think that the point of argument should be: "no, you err because your bodies are, in fact, healthy? Your members are not diseased; your features are not misshapen?" If this is so, how do we persuade towards a consensus of what health is?