Drag Queen Story Hour's radical origins and the subversive sexualization of our kids

Drag Queen Story Hour has become controversial as what advocates consider a family-friendly experience has spread to public libraries and even schools across America.

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Sign up for his newsletter here. 

This ideology’s foundations start with queer theory, the academic discipline born in 1984 with the publication of Gayle S. Rubin’s essay "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." Rubin sought to expose the power dynamics that shaped and repressed human sexual experience." Modern Western societies appraise sex acts according to a hierarchical system of sexual value," she wrote. "Marital, reproductive heterosexuals are alone at the top erotic pyramid," whose bottom tier includes the "lowliest of all, those whose eroticism transgresses generational boundaries," she wrote.

Rubin’s project was to subvert this sexual hierarchy and usher in a world beyond limits. Where does this process end? With the abolition of restrictions on the behavior at the bottom end of the moral spectrum—pedophilia.