To those not paying attention, a recent Blue’s Clues episode featuring a sing-along led by a drag queen was yet another entry in the growing trend of networks sneaking sly LGBTQ references into programming for children so young, they haven’t even entered kindergarten yet. Doc McStuffins has lesbian dollies. PBS’s Arthur has a gay teacher. Male celebrity RuPaul plays a female character on Bubble Guppies.
But the Blue’s Clues Pride parade was something else. In the midst of a culture war that the Right has been losing for decades, this was a blitz attack.
In the video, Andrew Levitt (stage name Nina West) wears a rainbow-hued gown with a double-heart bodice (more on that in a minute) and sings about “ace, pan, and bi” animals to the beloved nursery school tune, “The Ants Go Marching.” As the parade rolls on, colorful, cuddly creatures including “non-binary” dolphins and post-operative beavers wave merrily from the screen.
Eventually, we see groups of adult animals—a “family of kings and queens”—who “love each other so proudly” go marching by. “Come join the fun!” Leavitt cries to the two- to five-year-old target audience. But what, exactly, are the children being invited to do?
Dr. Debra Soh, sexual neuroscientist and author of “The End of Gender,” tells me kids the age of the Blue’s Clues’ demographic don’t have an accurate conception of gender. Before around six years old, she says, “they will believe that a person’s hairstyle or clothing determines whether they are male or female. For example, a child will believe that a little boy who puts on a dress has turned into a girl.” (Of course, kids are hardly alone in that confusion these days. Plenty of adults now believe it too … )
Soh says small children are highly suggestible, and videos like the Blue’s Clues parade encourage them to question their gender. “[It] teaches them that any gender atypicality or discomfort in their bodies means they should consider transitioning or that they are a third gender.” This kind of indoctrination, she explains, can spark the social contagion we are already witnessing: “Countless young adults, particularly women, [are] transitioning and then de-transitioning at a rapid rate. Being exposed to these ideas through social media, entertainment, and education will likely lead to more young people unfortunately falling into this trend.”
So we’re left with the obvious question — why is network Nick Jr. (note the junior) and its parent company Nickelodeon introducing kids to concepts about sexuality and sexual identity that are far beyond their capacity to understand?
The first explanation, while shameful, is less abhorrent than the second. The company, joined by millions of progressive parents eager to garner approval from the gods of this age, is sacrificing children’s innocence and mental health on the altar of social respectability.
We might all wish we lived in a world where we didn’t need to mention the second explanation, but as the video itself proves, we have reached a point where we can no longer ignore it.
Nickelodeon revealed to multiple news outlets it consulted with Lindz Amer, an LGBTQ activist dubbed “the queer Mister Rogers,” to pack the episode chock-full of symbols. Some are obvious — the animals carry flags representing every possible adult sexual desire, while Leavitt holds a microphone sporting a black power fist. Others, including clothing in colors that represent pansexuality and the beaver’s aforementioned mastectomy scars, have a more subtle, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it quality. Others are debatable but, given the shockingly inappropriate nature of the video, merit discussion.
In 2016, the Daily Mail published a story on symbols the FBI says pedophiles use to signal their sexual preferences. Second on the list is a small heart placed within a larger heart known as the “GirlLover logo.” Some eagle-eyed folks on social media, including Babylon Bee Managing Editor Joel Berry, pointed out the image’s similarity to the heart-within-a-heart bodice Leavitt’s drag queen character is wearing.
Could the emblem have been included inadvertently, its resemblance to the FBI-identified logo a matter of coincidence? Of course. But given the heavy symbology throughout the rest of the video and its aggressive subtext of group sex, the Blues Clue’s team isn’t exactly making a strong argument why they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
As American society shrugs off the last vestiges of the religious faith that provided guardrails to earlier generations, history shows us that without that restraining moral hand, adult-child sex can become a perfectly accepted practice. In ancient pagan Rome and Greece, pederasty was so widespread among the upper classes it was celebrated in artwork like the Warren Cup. In modern day Afghanistan, Bacha Bazi — where wealthy older men dress boys up as girls and exploit them as sex slaves — is rampant. Are we really naïve enough to believe that we’re immune from this kind of evil?
Just this week, The Daily Wire reported on a director of health at an elite private school showing first graders videos about masturbation. Just this year, a transgender activist behind “Drag Queen Story Hour” was arrested on charges of child pornography, something that came after a number of the other drag queens in the organization were revealed to be convicted sex offenders.
We cannot afford to be polite anymore and pretend that we don’t understand why a show for preschoolers would want them to “join the fun” of celebrating transgenderism, pansexuality, and polyamory.
As Ben Shapiro reported in 2015, the Left has begun openly signaling intentions to mainstream pedophilia. But then, these arguments were being hashed out in medical journals and semi-legitimate left-wing news outlets like Salon. Now, they’re hitting your child’s favorite channels and cereal boxes in glaring technicolor.
If there was any doubt left, the Blue’s Clues episode proved the hard Left has a yawning, voracious appetite for the innocence of children that the soft Left and mushy middle will amiably feed so long as no one calls them a bigot.
At some point, if there is to be any hope for a future that does not leave our children at the mercy of adult sexual desires, we must declare a tipping point and refuse to move on to the next stop on the outrage cycle.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.