Anti-Drag Hate Continues At The MRC

Media Research Center kept its rage against drag queens burning hot as 2023 progressed. Matt Philbin spent a Jan. 27 post reacting to a drag show during halftime at a pro basketball game in a freakout filled with toxic masculinity:

Well, the Milwaukee Bucks came out of the closet this week, becoming the first NBA team to declare itself queer. 

At Wednesday’s “Pride Night” game, the team gave attendees a “Bucks Pride” scarf and beanie, and announced that the Milwaukee PD officially recognized their arena as a terrific place to be gay. Team members made videos about how great the gay is, and at halftime they ceded the court to gyrating dudes in women’s clothes for a drag show. Apparently, they found time to play basketball too. All in a night’s work.

[…]

Well, if you knew it was Pride Night and you bought your family tickets anyway, you don’t much care what your kids are exposed to. And since the whole point of Pride Night is to advertise the team’s virtue, it’s hard to imagine someone not getting word before hand. 

So please join me in congratulating the Bucks for their courage, wishing them well as they continue to live their truth as the first gay pro basketball team.

Philbin seems a bit insecure in his masculinity if all he can come up with is a childish “you’re so gay” insult.

Later in the day, Philbin cheered anti-drag laws in North Dakota:

We’ve reached the point where we need laws to keep men in women’s clothes from performing lewd dance routines in front of kids. Isn’t progress great? 

The North Dakota House voted 79-13 to make it illegal to do drag shows with children present. According to Fox News, “Rep. Brandon Prichard, a Republican from Bismarck, said Thursday he proposed the bill after learning of drag shows performed in front of children, including at least once on the Capitol steps.”

At leastone … 

So the question is, who were the 13 reps that think pervs and kids belong together?

Philbin did not explain who indoctrinated him with the hateful belief that all drag queen are “pervs” who only do “lewd dance routines.”

The MRC’s chief dragphobe and transphobe, Tierin-Rose Mandelburg, got to mix both hateful obsessions in a Feb. 3 post that went on a tirade against  “drag queen turned trannie” Jinkx Monsoon, who landed a part in a  Broadway musical. Mandelburg quickly descended into your typical right-wing “drag queens are coming for your children” fearmongering:

The two then got into the growing “backlash” that drag queens have been receiving. “Drag has slayed and sashayed its way into mainstream entertainment,” [CBS correspondent Christina] Ruffini began, “it’s also become a target.” Violence against anyone is always wrong, but it’s important to point out that drag only became an issue when drag queens got out of their own lane and got into the lane where children exist. 

If you wanna do drag, go ahead. You’re weird but I mean, feel free. However, the second a drag queen enters a space with children present, THAT’s when the line needs to be drawn. Children should not be subjected to such a twisted way of life and told to accept it as normal.

Whether its children attending “family-friendly” drag shows where performers execute provocative dance moves and lay spread eagle on the floor, or where drag queens host fashion shows for “drag youth,” or drag queen story hour, “drag” and “children” should never intersect.

Why is Mandelburg so afraid of drag queens? She offers no evidence that drag queens pose any sort of realistic threat to children — after all, children in the 1950s weren’t traumatized by Milton Berle in drag on national TV (which wouldn’t be allowed under some states’ anti-drag laws). And one has to think that Mandelburg doesn’t really mean that “violence against anyone is always wrong” when she’s suggesting it would be permissible against a drag queen who got even remotely close to a child.

Kevin Tober spent a Feb. 6 post lashing out at TV panelists — one of whom is one of the MRC’s favorite targets — who pointed out the scare tactics behind the right-wing anti-drag crusade:

On Monday’s edition of CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront, host Erin Burnett and her panelists tore into Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for the grave sin of holding companies accountable that seek to sexually exploit and indoctrinate children for the left’s political gain. Most notably, panelist and co-host of The View Alyssa Farah Griffin defended parents who want to abuse their children by bringing them to drag shows and beclowned herself by admitting that she “love[s] drag.” 

Burnett turned to left-wing radical Van Jones on the drag queen story hour topic and falsely claimed: “this is not a big thing, okay.”

She then added: “But to the extent that it is something that comes up, there are a lot of parents who may not be Republican or right-wing Republican or whoever who might be uncomfortable with that. Is it a smart issue to pick it? So in other words, so that you as a Democrat aren’t put in a position of defending why 6-year-olds should be allowed to go to drag queens?”

Jones deflected from the question posed to him and whined: “It’s cynical. And it’s the kind of cynical thing a bully does. It speaks poorly to his character. I don’t think that the biggest threat to American children is some drag queen thing.”

[…]

Finally, the most insane commentary was predictably given by The View co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin. 

At first, it started off promising when Griffin said she’s “not comfortable with the idea of a 6-year-old being at a drag show.”  

But then it took a turn for the worse when she embarrassed herself by admitting “I love drag. I’m 33. So, let’s not ban it.”

“Let’s not have the heavy hand of the state come in and make a decision for parents. This seems like conservatism 101. Let the parent opt-in to what they want their kids to have exposure to,” Griffin lectured. 

If that’s “conservatism 101” then conservatism deserves to die a swift death. But luckily that’s not what conservatism stands for. 

This shouldn’t be a political issue. Children don’t belong at drag shows. Period.

Tober didn’t dispute that his fellow right-wingers are using bully tactics against drag queens. And, like his fellow co-workers, he failed to explain why he believes all drag queens are all inherently evil who must be purged from society and hidden away lest children see them and learn not to hate the way their parents do. And if Tober and his pals support trying to legislate drag out of existence, they’re the ones who are politicizing things.

Mandelburg returned to freak out in a Feb. 9 post:

CNN is doing its part for the drag queen lobby.

The network’s Erica Hill did a puff segment Thursday morning with Reverend Todd Vetter and Jonathan Hamilt, Executive Director of Drag Story Hour, to protest the GOP-backed legislation that aims to protect kids from the obscenity of drag shows. In a roughly six-minute exchange on live TV, the trio spewed lies and woke propaganda about the need for drag in kids’ lives — and in the lives of Christians.

Vetter, of the First Congregational Church of Madison, Connecticut, put on a drag bingo event to raise money for his youth group to attend a mission trip to build homes for people. Naturally, he received some backlash but he kept it up He claimed it wasn’t a “political statement” and insisted it was to signal that his church was an “open and affirming” place.

Being judgmental about anytthing and everything that offends her far-right sensibilities and ideology is, of course, Mandelburg’s brand. She then imposed her rigid and narrow view of Christianity on the situation, insisting that Jesus would never hang with drag queens:

Vetter said the experience was “an affirmation of who we are as a church, how we think about the commandment to love our neighbor and I think it, whatever lessons the community has taken away from this is — I think, positive — but it is a great affirmation for us of who we are and who we are called to be.”

So his flock is called to hang around with perverts?

While the Bible does say to love our neighbor and that we are not to judge others, it also commands us to walk as Jesus would. If Jesus were running a church in the U.S. today, he wouldn’t be using men in dress-up clothes and wearing boob attachments to raise money for a youth mission trip. Vetter is enabling drag behavior and exposing kids to it.

Mandelburg did the stock right-wing ranting about drag queen story hours: “Most regular story-hour’s don’t and shouldn’t have men with fake boobs wearing short skirts and makeup.” She then went on to justify anti-drag hate by using the Orwellian framing of calling it “pro-child”:

He claimed that people who are in opposition of kids being in spaces with drag queens are simply homophobic and transphobic. 

Hill then went on a tangent bashing the Republican-introduced law that would help protect kids from the immorality at drag shows. The law indicates that parents may be charged if they bring their kids to drag events, as they should, as well as insists that restaurants and bars that host the drag shows to register as sexually oriented businesses … I mean, duh.

The bill isn’t “anti-drag,” but instead is “pro-child.” If you want to dress up in drag, go ahead, you’re a freak but not hurting anyone but yourself. But the second drag and children intersect or enter into the same place, a thick line needs to be drawn. 

Kids should not be exposed to drag. Period.

Again, Mandelburg didn’t explain exactly how any child — or any adult — is threatened in any way by drag queens.

UPDATE: One we overlooked earlier: A Dec. 22 post by Brad Wilmouth complained that right-wing dragphobia was called out, huffing that a PBS show “devoted a segment to an LGBT activist who has been defending drag shows against efforts by conservatives to restrict their ability to involve children” and that the host “made sure to label critics of drag shows as ‘far-right’ as she set up the interview.” Wilmouth didn’t dispute the accuracy of the label.