EVERGREEN, Colorado (LifeSiteNews) — A health clinic that works with autistic children and other special needs kids hosted a “Drag Story Hour” earlier this year featuring book readings and “performances by five drag artists,” The Daily Signal reported.
In a Tuesday exclusive report, The Daily Signal cited information gathered by parental rights group Parents Defending Education (PDE) concerning a “Drag Story Hour” advertised by Colorado health clinic Seven Dimensions Behavioral Health as a “special event” for kids.
Seven Dimensions is a Colorado Department of Human Services-licensed day treatment program that states on its website it provides “[i]ndividualized center-based, in-home, school & community based Applied Behavior Analysis services for all ages and diagnoses serving the Colorado front range from Fort Collins to Denver, including Jefferson County.”
According to the report, Seven Dimensions sent parents an email on May 16 asking them to sign a permission slip for their kids to attend a “drag story hour that will include a mix of stories/activities and age-appropriate performances by five drag artists.”
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PDE provided The Daily Signal with a copy of the email, which also states that there would be “three stories and two activities: Auntie Uncle-Drag Queen Hero, The Girl Who Thought in Pictures, If You’re a Kid Like Gavin, Parachute party and freeze dance.”
The email explains that the “parachute party” would involve “a rainbow parachute that the kids hold onto making the parachute go up and down and/or the kids go under the parachute while RBTs [Registered Behavior Technicians] wiggle the parachute for the kids.”
The outlet noted that a flyer for the “story hour,” whose tagline was: “The Future Is Our Kids,” allegedly included a list of featured drag queens with highly sexual stage names.
PDE responded to news of the event by submitting a public records request to Jeffco Public Schools in Jefferson County, Colorado, to confirm whether or not the school district is contracted with Seven Dimensions. PDE told The Daily Signal that such a contract exists and is slated to expire June 30.
Seven Dimensions did not return The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
In comments to The Daily Signal, PDE president Nicole Neily blasted the clinic for hosting the event for “vulnerable” kids.
“Rather than upholding its oath to ‘do no harm,’ this clinic is betraying the trust of families in need who have come to them for help,” she said. “It is unconscionable that medical providers would target programming at a vulnerable population.”
The Daily Signal noted that “people who identify as transgender children who identify as transgender are three to six times more likely to be autistic than those who do not identify as transgender.”
The drag queen story hour phenomenon traces its origins to a collaboration between LGBT activist group RADAR Productions and radical feminist author Michelle Tea in San Francisco in 2015, LifeSiteNews previously pointed out. The “drag queen” events, in which fully-grown men clad in garish makeup, wigs, and women’s clothing read books to small children, have since taken root not just in the U.S. but globally as moves to expose children to overtly sexual and pro-LGBT content have ramped up.
However, outrage from parents and others concerned about protecting the innocence of children has subsequently sparked legislation across the U.S. banning the perverted performances for children.
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Montana is among the states that have moved to ban the events at libraries and public schools.
In May, Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed House Bill 359, which states that “[a] school or library that receives any form of funding from the state may not allow a sexually oriented performance or drag story hour … on its premises during regular operating hours or at any school-sanctioned extracurricular activity,” LifeSiteNews reported.
One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Rep. Braxton Mitchell, argued that drag queens performing for children were pushing a “sick agenda” and that the events were “damaging to a child’s psychology and general welfare.”
Moves to normalize divergent attitudes concerning sexuality have occurred alongside drastic spikes in rates of children claiming to be transgender, non-binary, or any other of the variety of increasingly popular “gender identities.” Leaders in the transgender medical field have acknowledged that “social contagion” is a factor in rising numbers of trans identification among children and youth.
Available data indicates that nearly one-in five Generation Z young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 identify as LGBT compared with 11.2% of millennials and just 3.3% of older adults.