By Sharayah Colter
July 17, 2023
Ten years ago, claims of the gay agenda “coming for our children” would have been brushed aside as hyperbole and dismissed as farcical — a right-wing overreaction, many would have said.
Today, the evidence now obliterates that narrative.
In July 2021, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sang “we’re coming for your children” here and here.
In June 2023, participants in a New York City drag march chanted, “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”
Throughout 2023, discussion reached into the courts, culture, and legislative debates over whether sexually explicit drag shows should be allowed to include children in the audience.
And now, just last week, national education leaders lent their voices and influence to the progressive aim of keeping pornographic and sexually explicit books available to children.
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten spoke July 13, 2023 at a Banned Bookmobile event in Chicago, decrying the efforts of parents and political leaders working to keep adult-content books out of children’s classrooms and libraries. One of the books on display just inches from the podium where Weingarten spoke was “Gender Queer” — a book that depicts in cartoon drawings sex acts too explicit and obscene to list here. Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik shared pages from the book to help people understand what kind of lurid content progressive advocates defend.
Proponents of keeping sexualized content available to minors in public schools—including political action group MoveOn, organizer of the Banned Bookmobile campaign—now employ buzzwords such as freedom, democracy, and censorship in their self-described anti-“MAGA” messaging.
Consider this comment from MoveOn Executive Director Rahna Epting:
“Let me be crystal clear: These book bans are an anti-American attack on all of our freedoms, on free thought, and on a free society itself. That is why we are launching this glorious Banned Bookmobile: to celebrate diversity of thought; reflect and honor the rich stories, histories, and experiences of all of our communities and to affirmatively push back on the MAGA agenda; to sound the alarm across the country; and to show up for freedom and democracy.”
But only recently has defending freedom and democracy been torturously twisted into a translation for exposing children to indecent acts.
School boards across the nation do not want the content of books such as “Gender Queer” discussed aloud at their meetings, even cutting off the microphones of parents attempting to share excerpts from books available in their children’s schools.
Local news stations have blurred images from some of these books in their reporting to avoid violating Federal Communications Commission standards and incurring substantial fines.
Too taboo for the school board meeting and the nightly news, but acceptable for children? What rationale can explain this?
Ten years ago, the question of whether children should be exposed to pornographic material and books depicting sexual acts would have been asked and quickly answered, “No.”
But in today’s culture that is cutting the strings of its tether to truth and decency in more rapid determination than ever in the history of the United States, these questions are forcing Americans to evaluate the foundation of their values and to decide anew, or perhaps for the first time, what system of morals and ethics guides the way they order their lives and communities. Judeo-Christian ethics derived from the Bible were once accepted as a foundation upon which Americans agreed to base law and policy. Today, such agreement has been shattered.
Christians must lead the way in proclaiming the virtue of biblical truth and educating citizens to see the precarious position that has developed from pulling the foundation out from underneath a once-stable society.
As President John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
When a depraved culture announces it is “coming for our children,” will we acknowledge the reality of the threats we face and seek solutions? The declaration that the battle has come to the front steps of our homes and families could not ring any more clear. The urgent question for us today as parents, leaders, teachers, and community members is will we abandon our apathy and shed all desire not to “stir the pot” or to “mix politics and religion” and embrace the duty to protect our children and our country before it is too late.