COMMENT
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When I saw the promotional poster for Wollongong library's drag story time, my heart soared, then sank.
I'm proud to live in a city - and an age - that means this event can happen and be accepted by many. But I knew that, benign as it may be, there’d be backlash over having a drag queen read to children at a library.
And, as expected, this cheerful reading - part of the Queer Arts Festival - has attracted disturbing criticism.
For instance, people think it will spread propaganda (of what? That gay people and drag queens exist - oh no!) or somehow sexualise or indoctrinate children.
I don't know how this persists, but you can’t be indoctrinated into being gay. Not even if you see a drag queen reading a book!
In the same way it would be preposterous to suggest you might be "indoctrinated" into being straight by listening to a person attracted to members of the opposite sex read, these are not "choices" or optional "lifestyles" that can be passed on by listening to what someone has to say.
Diverse expressions of sex and gender are part of the world we live in, and have a place and voice in the public life of our city.
Also, while we use words like sexual orientation and same-sex marriage, being LGBTQI is not actually all about sex. Sure, like being straight, that's part of life - for consenting adults - and in an adult setting a drag performance can certainly be provocative. But it's a bizarre myth to think that, because someone is attracted to members of the same sex, or likes to dress in drag, they exist in some sort of permanent sex bubble.
This event is a performer in dress-ups reading to kids - something that happens at libraries across the world all the time. If you see sex and perversion in a book reading that's going to be fun, innocent, educational and involve craft and singing, you might like to take a critical look at yourself instead of the man in drag.
We're lucky this event comes with a clearly still-needed message - that people who were once silenced and shoved to the fringes of society by bigotry are welcome here.
If you don't want your kids to know that, you don't have to go along, but I'm happy to know that my children will grow up in a world where this is celebrated.