(LifeSiteNews) — In a sane and normal (not to say moral) country, bringing in drag queens to read to schoolchildren would be breaking news, and canceling a drag queen event for children would not. Canada, of course, is not such a country.

Thus, Canada’s press is breathlessly covering yet another Pride Month scandal. Mutchmor Public School—aptly named, as it turns out—had scheduled drag performer Adrianna Exposée to come in and read to children on June 19 for the Sacred Liturgical Month of Pride. According to Juno News: “According to a letter sent to parents at Mutchmor Public School, the June 19 event was quietly cancelled as questions mount over parental pushback and how far equity and inclusion initiatives should go inside classrooms.”

The school claimed that the drag performer event “was intended to promote literacy and themes of equity, diversity, and inclusion,” but the administrators decided to instead incorporate these themes into “regular classroom activities.” Apparently, it is in fact possible to teach literacy without drag queens.

But Ottawa-Carleton District School Board trustee Donna Blackburn informed the Ottawa Citizen that she is “very, very disappointed and quite frankly mortified” (one would think her threshold for mortification was quite high, but there you have it). According to the Citizen: “Blackburn, who describes herself as Ottawa’s first openly gay school trustee elected in a municipal election, said the cancellation sent the wrong message to LGBTQ+ students.”

In case you’re wondering about who Blackburn thought the right messenger for schoolchildren is, feel free to take a look at Adrianna Exposée’s website, although I don’t recommend it. Exposée’s portfolio primarily involves sexually explicit displays, crossdressing (obviously)—oh, and reading to children. The drag name “Exposée” was chosen for a reason.

Drag Queen Story Hour has become a culture war flashpoint as angry parents protest events while progressive politicians and LGBT activists claim that they are essential—in 2023, LGBT activists insisted that the Toronto District School Board eliminate opt-out options and make drag queen events for children mandatory because to do otherwise was a violation of human rights.

So what is Drag Queen Story Hour? Their own website describes it this way:

DQSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where everyone can be their authentic selves! Drag Story Hour (DSH) was created by Michelle Tea and RADAR Productions, under the leadership of Julián Delgado Lopera and Virgie Tovar, in San Francisco in 2015. It started out as drag queens reading stories to children in libraries and grew into a global phenomenon! DSH now offers literary and creative programming for kids and teens of all ages led by drag queens, kings, and all other royal beings!

To point out that events like Drag Queen Story Hour in schools are intended to indoctrinate children is to state the obvious. Harris Kornstein, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona who moonlights as the drag queen “Lil Miss Hot Mess,” laid this out in a manifesto he co-authored with transgender queer theorist Harper Keenan of the University of British Columbia titled “Drag Pedagogy: The Playful Practice of Queer Imagination in Early Childhood.” The essay explains how “drag pedagogy” can be used to shape the minds of children.

“The professional vision of educators is often shaped to reproduce the state’s normative vision of its ideal citizenry. In effect, schooling functions as a way to straighten the child into a kind of captive alignment with the current parameters of that vision,” they wrote. “To state it plainly, within the historical context of the USA and Western Europe, the institutional management of gender has been used as a way of maintaining racist and capitalist modes of (re)production.”

Thus, DQSH can be used to teach children “how to live queerly” and bring “queer ways of knowing and being into the education of young children” by breaking the “binary between womanhood and manhood.” No wonder Donna Blackburn is “very, very disappointed” that the Adrianna Exposée event was canceled.