but why? Why are we taking drag queens out of night clubs and having them read to children? Why are so many people jumping over so many mental hurdles to justify it? They aren't trans, so it's not about trans rights or visibility. Average Trans Person Story Hour doesn't quite have the same ring to it does it... yes, actual transphobes would still be against that, but it would be a tiny minority and they'd easily be written off as bigots.
I think the explanation is pretty simple. Young people are constantly looking to be on the cutting edge of things, especially young progressives. They think, "conservatives, terfs, and all the other normies really hate this, so I have to be very supportive of it!!". If they don't adopt the most progressive view, they lose social credit. The next generation up (millennials, people our age) are still concerned with their social credit too and want to do all they can to appeal to gen z. So many of them join right in without fully thinking out the consequences.
So most of it can be written off as (mostly) harmless virtue signaling. But I do think some very bad people are latching on to all this under the guise of progressivism. And the longer we sane, rational people entertain these ridiculous ideas, the closer and closer we creep closer to normalizing a societal set of values that is very dangerous to children. Maybe nothing is very different for my niece but what about her children? What about after that?
If right now in 2023 everyone says yeah, you know what? Let the drag queens be around children. Puberty blockers are safe and reversible, let's allow 10 year olds to start making these serious medical decisions for themselves. That's a slippery slope. And it's not the same type of argument that was used by opponents of gay marriage.
Marriage is something that has many social and economic ramifications between consenting adults. That's very different than society suddenly making these seismic changes regarding a child's ability to make informed decisions on their own. Not to mention the psychological impact of being inundated with all these sexual-adjacent themes from the time they can hold cell phone.
What does being a "child" mean 100 years from now? Are they more safe, or less? Do they even exist, or has the idea that adults should band together to protect the innocence of kids vanished completely?