The Daily Signal - #324: What Do Drag Queens Want With Your Kids?

Episode Date: October 19, 2018

What do drag queens want with your kids? We look at a school controversy over what’s appropriate for kids, and what’s not.We also cover these stories:--Vice President Mike Pence called journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s death a “brutal murder” and said those who carried it out will be “held accountable.”--Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is withdrawing from public life after announcing she has the beginning stages of dementia.--Employees of Facebook, Google, and Twitter have given a total of $2.4 million to House and Senate candidates. Out of that total, only $176,000 or 8 percent went to Republicans.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, October 24th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. What do drag queens want with your kids? We'll take a look at a school controversy over what's appropriate for kids and what's not. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. Well, Vice President Mike Pence is vowing a strong U.S. response to the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He called Khashoggi's death a brutal murder and said those who carried it out will be held accountable.

In recent days, the Saudi government has admitted that Khashoggi died inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, though they deny ever ordering the killing. But Turkish President Erdogan is accusing the Saudis of just that. He called it a premeditated murder and demanded that Saudi Arabia handover the Saudi suspects involved. Vice President Mike Pence in remarks made at the Washington Post event Tuesday echoed acclaimed President Trump tweeted Monday. when Trump said, sadly, it looks like Mexico's police and military are unable to stop the caravan heading to the southern border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. Here's what Pence had to say.

It's inconceivable that there are not people of Middle Eastern descent in a crowd of more than 7,000 people advancing toward our border. Is that the case? Well, we don't have hard data on the demographics of the country. caravan, but generally, even if Middle Easterners are among those in the caravan, it's not likely that any terrorists are trying to use the caravan, a highly public well-watched group in order to enter into the United States. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is withdrawing from public life after announcing she has the beginning stages of dementia.

O'Connor was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, having been appointed by President Reagan in 1981. In part of her public statement, she said, quote, While the final chapter of my life with dementia may be trying, nothing has diminished my gratitude and deep appreciation for the countless blessings of my life. O'Connor's currently 88. President Obama isn't happy about President Trump taking credit for the roaring economy. Here's what Obama had to say earlier this week in Nevada.

So by the time I left office, wages were rising, on insurance rate was falling, poverty was falling, and that's what I handed off to the next guy. So when you hear all this talk about economic miracles right now, remember who started it. On a Tuesday appearance on Fox and Friends, Larry Cudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council and a top advisor to Trump, push back on Obama's claims. Well, I don't think he's right, with all respect to former President Obama. Look at, under his stewardship, the so-called recovery was, I don't know, 2% average per year, which is really the worst since the, I believe, since the Depression. And already, we have beaten our critics, including Obama's staff people.

We're on an economy that's 3 to 4% economic growth. And the whole change here, look, President Trump has cut tax rates on small businesses and corporations and individuals. rules and he wants to do some more. That's a huge change from President Obama. President Trump is, you know, rollback onerous regulations. And what you're seeing now is a tremendous increase in men and women who own and operate their own small businesses. Well, as Larry Kudlow said, the economy is booming. But President Trump is already planning another round of tax cuts. He said Congress will be taking up a new resolution that would cut taxes by 10% for middle income Americans. and he promised that Congress would vote on it by the end of the year.

Are you into storytelling podcasts that help explain some of today's toughest policy issues and debates? Every week on the Heritage Explains podcast, we interview experts, intermingling media clips and personal stories to help simplify issues from a conservative perspective. Find us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I was trying to live our faith. We've been mischaracterized. I mean, serve gays on many different occasions. There was never any intention on hurting these two girls ever. We're not those type of people. Those voices you just heard were Aaron and Melissa Klein in a 2015 video produced by The Daily Signal,

profiling the Christian couple who had been fined $135,000 and forced to shut their bakery after declining to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. But their case still lingers in 2018. Now, First Liberty, the Christian legal group representing the Klein's, is asking the Supreme the Supreme Court to hear their case, and they are hopeful that they will get an answer in the next few months as to whether that will occur. Well, Facebook, Twitter, and Google are known to be liberal companies, but some new numbers on campaign donations put things starkly into perspective. According to Fox News, which cites the Federal Election Commission, employees of those three

tech giants have given a total of $2.4 million to House and Senate candidates ahead of the midterms. Out of that total, only 176,000, that's 8%, went to Republicans. And just to give you some perspective, by comparison during the 2014 midterms, 31% of those donations went to Republicans. So definitely something about the year 2018 means more money going to the Dems. Well, on Sunday, a woman alleged that a man, Bruce Alexander, groped her on a Southwest flight. Now, USA Today reports an affidavit states that,

when Alexander was handcuffed, he said, quote, the president of the United States says, it's okay to grab women by their private parts, end quote. Alexander says he doesn't recall touching the female passenger. I'm Rob Blewey, editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal. And I'm Ginny Maltabano. Each weekday, the Daily Signal delivers the Morning Bell email direct to your inbox. We created the Morning Bell to be your one-stop source

for credible news reporting and insightful commentary on the issues that are shaping the agenda. You can subscribe today and get it delivered to your inbox each weekday morning. Sign up now at daily signal.com. Just click on the connect button at the top of the page and subscribe today. Video posted online shows the reactions of sixth through eighth graders. A relative of a student, drag queen Jessica Lahore, volunteered to speak. I knew that it was a be controversial because that was something I would never expect to be allowed like when I was growing up in middle school. And at the same time, I took it as an opportunity because I got to talk to a bunch of kids and kind of open up a new door for conversation. District spokesperson Joe Ferdani.

The school's focus is to have an event that is representative of the diverse backgrounds and careers within their community. Every class had one person asked me about how to handle with negativity, bullying. The district apologized for not notifying parents. Parents should have known in advance who was going to be speaking, and that didn't happen in this particular situation, and it will, moving forward. One student's parents sent CBS for an email saying, quote, parents are in an outrage, and this is so inappropriate on so many levels. Okay, well, that clip we just played is from the CBS Denver affiliate. Daniel, what do you think? Is it reasonable for a middle school to host drag queens on career day?

It is not reasonable. In fact, it is not right. I think it's wrong on multiple levels. At the very least here, you need parents to be notified and even asked about this, but they weren't asked whether the drag queen could be allowed into the school to speak to their kids, and they weren't even notified. So they found out after it had happened, which is horrible. And they've apologized for not notifying them.

But I think it goes deeper than that. I mean, if you read further in the article and read this drag queen's explanation, he said it was about being inclusive. You heard that from the school administrator. It's about being inclusive of different diversity. This is basically the left's strategy. It's been a strategy in recent years is to define all sorts of things in terms of identity. So this is somebody's identity.

therefore you have to include them, accept them, no matter what is included within that identity. Even if you object to certain things on ethical grounds that is subsumed into that identity, you have to accept them because it's their identity. And that's like the highest good. And that's a problem because it means that you can't object and you have to submit your kids to that, subject your kids to that kind of thing. Well, in fact, the drag queen Jessica Lahore, I believe, was his drag queen. name, was saying, like, you know, he was talking about, like, experiencing negativity and I believe

reading books about bullying and sort of the implication there is, is if you are not a fan of drag queens, you must be a bully, which is, of course, further indoctrinating the children and suggesting that, you know, if anyone had said, you know, I don't agree with what you're doing, I don't believe it's appropriate for a man to wear makeup, hair, and other body parts at times to mimic the appearance of a woman, presumably that would have been seen as hostile and, God forbid, negative. Yeah, and to kind of see how this logic doesn't work, you could take it further and say, what if someone, you're seeing it with transgenderism like this, similar, you know, what about trans speciesism? There's a piece in Daily Mail about someone who claims to be a dog.

What if they came and said, well, you know, we're just here to celebrate diversity. You've got to be inclusive, people's identity. And don't you dare. try to reject their identity. Well, what if a polyamorous group came and discussed about their free love? What if, you know, I don't, I certainly don't think this is an exact analogy, but what if a murderer came and was like, you shouldn't bully people? Like, I mean, I think there are a lot of situations where people would say, hey, there's some real room for ethical debate here.

Yeah. About all these matters. And, of course, they're not having that. They're not having a discussion. Well, and that's why society doesn't work when you base all of this stuff in identity. and no one is, right, and no one is able to challenge anyone's, you know, lifestyle, because that lifestyle falls under their identity, which is unassailable. Right.

And so society doesn't work that, you know, and so that's why you get homeschooling and you get private schools and you get parents opting their kids out. Absolutely. But the question is, this is a public school. So who gets to determine what is morally appropriate when the school? when the school is supposed to represent the entire community. Right. And I think, you know, one of the concerning things that we've seen throughout history

is people know that one of the surest ways to change a culture is to change the children, to change the education. And, you know, as you mentioned, a lot of parents choose alternative schools specifically because of this. And I think, you know, it's concerning. It's good that Denver is saying in the future they would at least notify parents. you know, they are six to eighth, they're at least not, you know, kindergarten or first graders. But no, it's very much sort of taking away from the parents something like they want to make this non-controversial.

So they're sort of socializing the idea with the kids. And I don't know. It also really upsets me. We've talked a little bit about these drag queen story hours that are happening, I believe, in public libraries. There was one in Wichita, Kansas. Right. And I think, you know, little children love dress up. They love, make-believe, but drag queen is not, obviously it involves those things,

but with definitely some pretty sexualized overtone. Yes. And, you know, it really upsets me to see that this innocent love for something is twisted into something, which, you know, when they're grown-ups, it's a free country, they can decide what they feel. But you're almost like taking advantage of their interests in these things to try to get them on a bandwagon that they are, you know, they don't understand and they're not really given a chance to understand. So I don't know. If I was a parent, I would be really mad.

Yeah. And again, like, you know, this is why you see parents putting their kids in other, you know, schooling options. I would certainly do that. I don't have kids, but I've already decided that if this happens in a public school, kids ain't going there. But even aside from that, you know, the debate is who gets to decide what is morally appropriate when it's a public school.

And that's why, frankly, our country's having a crisis right now because we have more and more disagreement on this kind of basic thing. True. And I think this also shows, you know, from a policy level, we talk about the need for school choice and programs like ESAs, which I'm forgetting what they stand for, but essentially a lot. Education savings accounts. Education savings accounts that give you a pool of money that parents can choose to use for a school or choose to use for homeschool materials or supplemental classes or all kinds of flexibility. because I think, you know, that's great that you think you wouldn't send your kids to public schools, but I think a lot of families find themselves in a financial crunch where they either can't afford private school or they don't have a parent who's able to homeschool or want to homeschool. And it's not really feasible.

Private schools are very expensive, even, you know, a lot of Christian ones. So it's definitely not a great atmosphere, but unfortunately public schools have become so hostile to traditional beliefs as we're seeing. I mean, I don't think Denver, Colorado is where most of us would think this would happen. Right. And that's why, as you say, you know, conservative should not just be concerned about protecting, you know, homeschooling and private school options, but really fighting for the public square, for public schools. Yeah, no, definitely. Well, we're going to leave it there for today, but thanks so much for listening to the Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or a rating on iTunes to give us any feedback.

We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to The Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis, sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.