So who DID think inviting a sexually explicit drag queen to a primary school was a good idea?

SOMETIMES public figures display such a spectacular lack of judgment that their only option is to become more determined in their foolishness. This certainly seems to be the case with the SNP’s Mhairi Black.

Never one to shy away from publicity, Black is always up for drawing attention to her favourite causes.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that when Black decided to pop along for story time with the children at a local primary school she came with a drag queen in tow.

And not just any old drag queen, but one with a particular penchant for sharing sexually explicit posts on social media.

Some parents have now demanded to know why an adult entertainer was considered the best person to read to the children – even with their MP acting as chaperone.

Yet rather than apologising, or even acknowledging the parents concerns, Black has been busy on Twitter lashing out at her critics with accusations of homophobia and bigotry.

Children have always loved story time. Throwing drag queens into the mix is a far more recent development. The ‘drag queen story hour’ phenomena first took off in the US as right-on parents sought to combine a visit to the local library and lessons in gender fluidity in the one handy trip.

Now drag queens can be found reading stories to children in libraries, schools and book stores across America.

The aim, according to one promotional website, is to ‘give kids glamorous, positive and unabashedly queer role models’ so that they ‘are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions’.

Drag queen story hours are now beginning to take off in the UK. Teachers and librarians presumably see them as a vital tool in the fight against the homophobia and transphobia they imagine lurks deep in the heart of every toddler. Still, it’s not every day that your local MP comes along for the ride. It seems fair to say that the drag queen Black accompanied, Nathan Mullen, aka Flow, was used to performing for slightly older audiences.

Since news of the school visit broke, Mullen has taken to social media again, not – this time – to post pictures of simulating oral sex, but instead to defend the story time routine: ‘You take your kids to see panto at Christmas that has drag. Drag is mainstream now. It’s on our TVs, in the news and all over social media.’

Now, I’m not at all averse to a good panto. But whenever I’ve taken my three children for a Christmas treat, the dame has always been far more concerned with getting them to shout out ‘he’s behind you!’ and ‘oh no he’s not!’ than simulating sex.

Outlandish

It’s not just Mhairi Black who needs to be held to account for what happened at Glencoats Primary School. The headteacher also seems to be of the opinion that a visit from a drag queen was just what the children needed.

Most drag queens get paid for their performance. Perhaps Flow also received an appearance fee that came out of the Glencoats budget – money that could have been better spent on, well, just about anything. Books for the library would be my outlandish suggestion. Crazy, I know!

Black has defended her decision to accompany Flow to Glencoats Primary on Twitter.

She said: ‘If my school had invited a gay MP and a drag queen to visit during LGBT History Month, or even acknowledged that LGBT History Month existed, it would have made an immeasurable difference to the difficult childhoods my LGBT classmates and I had.’

Seriously? Back when I was a teacher, the pupils I taught who have since come out as gay would have been mortified to be associated with a drag queen. They simply wanted to be treated like every other child.

And if homophobic bullying is a concern, teachers have many ways to deal with the problem that do not involve sexually explicit drag queens.

But Black’s comments get to the heart of why the drag queen visit happened.

Campaigning MPs like Black, as well as teachers like those at Glencoats Primary, see the purpose of schools not as educational but political.

They are less concerned about teaching children how to read and write than they are about promoting a set of politically correct values.

These teachers have thrown their weight behind sex and relationships classes that go far beyond the basic biology of how babies are made and aim instead to mould children’s views on gender roles and sexual relationships.

For many teachers and campaigners, this means challenging what they see as out dated notions, such as the idea that there are just two sexes, male and female, and that sex often takes place between men and women.

These old-fashioned ideas are derided for being ‘heteronormative’ and reinforcing a ‘gender binary’.

In their eyes, not only is this way of thinking boringly conventional but worse, it promotes sexism, misogyny and transphobia, as well as paving the way for bullying and abusive relationships.

Rather than having this argument out with adults who might dare to disagree with them, campaigners opt to persuade children who can’t answer back. Enter, stage left, the drag queen.

The cross-dressing, risque performer, once a cheap turn in working men’s clubs or part of obscure fetish scenes, is now far more likely to be found reading stories to prepubescent children in schools and libraries. Only now the audience is too young to be in on the joke.

In the hands of ideologically inspired teachers and librarians, nothing is off limits in the drive to shock children out of their heteronormative assumptions.

The notion that some topics are not suitable to discuss in front of children or that (whisper it) the role of adults is to protect children from ideas and issues they are too young to need to know about is derided as hopelessly outdated. The views of parents, of course, are deemed to be utterly irrelevant.

Since her school visit, Black has explicitly attacked the parents who she claims have expressed ‘faux outrage’.

Deserves

Taking to Twitter once more, she said: ‘You just know that the people pretending to be livid that a drag queen read a book in a school… are also the people who run out to buy their kids the latest Grand Theft Auto on release day. Your homophobia is transparent.’

Let’s hope that she’s not relying on the votes of any of these parents come the next general election.

Black deserves all the criticism that has come her way over her decision to join Flow in the visit to the primary school. But before Black got involved in this stunt there was a headteacher who thought that having a sexually explicit drag performer come along to read to children was a good idea.

And, even before this, there were MPs and civil servants all too ready to act at the behest of campaigners in their demand for ever more relationships and sex education for even the very youngest children.

Children at school are a captive audience for adult concerns. It’s imperative we do not abuse this responsibility.