NYT: 'Leave Drag Queen Story Hour Alone!'

During the 1980s and 1990s, when the self-described champions of family values battled the forces of louche cosmopolitanism, the right could make at least a plausible claim to representing the interests of wholesome squares against the edgy cultural vanguard. Back then, there was a live debate on the left about the institution of the nuclear family, and a vogue for shocking the bourgeoisie. One huge public controversy of the period involved government funding for avant-garde art that was sexually explicit, or that Catholics considered blasphemous.

These days, however, the left has become overwhelmingly family-friendly. For years now, the mainstream L.G.B.T. rights movement has been more consumed with marriage and children than sexual liberation. The anti-Trump resistance is dominated by middle-aged suburban mothers horrified by the president’s depravity. On the left’s cutting edge, meetings of the Democratic Socialists of America often provide child care, and a recent issue of the socialist magazine Jacobin came with a kids’ book.

Rather than a plot to corrupt children, Drag Queen Story Hour, which started in San Francisco and has spread to cities across the country, is another sign that the cultural left has been domesticated. Instead of performing in seedy bars, drag queens are using their love of music, theatricality and elaborate costumes to help caregivers entertain little kids. It’s a way, said Jonathan Hamilt, a co-founder of the program, for the performers “to get out of the night life and into their communities, their neighborhoods, their towns where they live, and give back.”

On the right, by contrast, an online demimonde has developed where nihilistic subversion is celebrated. White supremacists recruit through video game culture. The alt-right lures disaffected adolescents with subcultural signals that baffle the uninitiated. I’d happily take my kids to Drag Queen Story Hour if it were held closer to my apartment, but I’d smash my computer to bits before I’d let them near a pro-Trump message board.