Imagine if exotic dancers left their strip clubs to stage a vulgar, sexually suggestive public performance at a local theater – for “all ages,” no less. Now imagine some adults actually taking their young children to see it.

Would you think that’s in any way acceptable?

Fact is, you don’t have to concoct the scenario; it actually happened in Kansas City Tuesday at the Midland Theatre – except it was men dressed as women in “A Drag Queen Christmas.” The traveling show was bizarrely advertised for “all ages” but with the warning “adult content.” Try reconciling that.

But adult content indeed. Reports of the show from a venue in Austin, Texas say it included simulated sex acts, bawdy outfits and outbursts, young children tipping the drag queens a la an actual strip club, and a tip jar saying “put the tip in … see how it feels.”

One would think such a sexualized children’s show by women would be met with enough outrage to pull the curtain down. Not so with imitation women.

Why is that? Why is a sex show for kids somehow more acceptable when it’s men parading as crude caricatures of women?

It’s not.

“I do not find any of the aforementioned situations to be acceptable. I believe childhood should be a time of innocence,” says outraged young mother Cassie Bradley Vaughn, who helped organize a peaceful protest by several dozen defending children outside the theater. 

Allowing that parents may disagree on when it’s appropriate to expose children to the seamy underbelly of life, Vaughn nonetheless argues, “What I cannot see is any logical argument for exposing a child to highly sexualized content such as this ‘Christmas’ drag show that KC’s Midland Theatre is allowing all ages to attend.

“Minors definitely attended the show. The youngest looked to be about 6 years old.”

Also attending were several helmeted members of Antifa KC, who were there as a “community defense group” to, as one online headline put it, “Defend Drag Event From Far-Right In Kansas City.” They called the concerned mothers and fathers and grandparents – one of whom drove all the way from Bolivar, Missouri – “Christo-fascists.”

They called the grandmother from Bolivar worse than that, Vaughn says.

By the way, where are the feminists, while womanhood is being reimagined like this?

“I can’t speak for the feminists,” Vaughn says. “As a woman, though, I can say it is definitely offensive to see how these drag performers are portraying women. Women were created with the precious potential of becoming mothers. We were created in a way where we can nourish and provide for our children in a special way that a man cannot.

“To see these drag performers flaunting fake breasts around, asking children questions like, ‘Are you hungry,’ while exposing themselves in such overtly sexual and indecent ways, it is completely degrading and should be shamed, not celebrated.”

Meanwhile, local law enforcement was in evidence to make sure the show went on – despite such a sexualized performance for minors quite likely being quite illegal. Concerned citizens and civic leaders wrote to Kansas City officials asking them to prevent children from being exposed to what amounted to an all-age gentlemen’s club, but to no avail.

“Kids cannot get into R-rated movies. They cannot get into porn shops,” says concerned citizen Natalie Scholl. “They cannot buy cigarettes. They cannot buy alcohol. Why? Because it’s not appropriate. They are not of age to be able to do those things, and there is a reason for it. These are laws.  

“You’re sexualizing children when you bring them to these shows. And that is sick. It’s perverted. And it has to stop. I really can’t even explain in words why some parents think it’s fine. It’s heartbreaking.”

How in God’s name did we get here?

Answer: certainly not in His name.

“I think we have been spiraling down for many years,” Scholl says, “because people are turning away from God and they’re turning away from the church, which means they’re turning away from morality. And I just think it’s getting more pervasive. Right now we’ve got teachers and administrators and superintendents allowing this in schools.  

“This agenda is to try to make kids think it’s OK, this kind of behavior – that it’s fine, that it’s not sinful. Because if there’s no God, then sin is fine, right? So it’s just been a moral decline, and it’s happening in our schools. We’ve got churches that are literally turning from God, and they’re supposed to be houses of God, and they are not teaching what needs to be taught, and they’re woke.”

“I believe it’s been a long process of desensitization,” adds Vaughn. “Through culture, TV programming, movies, music, books, so many things, the children and adults of our country have been desensitized. We have reached a point where sexuality has become so normalized that some schools are even teaching that a child’s sexuality begins at infancy.

“So, if this is your normal, what’s the problem with your child attending a drag show? If there’s no right or wrong or absolute truth, why not?”

Turns out, the same show in suburban St. Louis, staged by drag show promoter Murray & Peter, was forced to ban minors after a public outcry. In fact, Chesterfield Mayor Bob Nation fought to give the city credit for the show’s age limit, to diminish the role of state Sen. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring – whose letter alerted residents and leaders to the formerly all-ages act and its illegality.

Where were Kansas City’s leaders? Why were law enforcement officers allowing children inside when Eigel and others cited laws against it? Has the city of my birth simply become anything-goes leftist?

And what can people do about all this?

“Parents and grandparents have got to stop ignoring these things,” Scholl says. “I know kids are in a lot of sports and they’re in dance and they’re in activities. That’s wonderful. However, this is a fight for our kids.

“Parents have got to stop just being concerned about their own kids. We need to think of children as a whole, all of them, because they are the next generation. They’re going to be running this country in the next generation. And if we teach children to be immoral, then they’re not going to grow to be moral adults. They’re going to be immoral adults. 

“So, parents have got to wake up, and they’ve got to show up and speak up, speak out, and not be afraid. Now is the time to be courageous for our kids.”

“Pray,” adds Vaughn. “Speak up for what is right. Raise our children to know truth, and have healthy morals. Love, and have compassion toward those who have been so hurt and misled and will no doubt end up in a dark place. Be ready to love on them and help them heal.

“Most importantly, don’t allow yourself to become desensitized to what this country has become. Don’t lose hope. We are in a season where we celebrate hope against all odds, where we give remembrance to a love that conquered all. We can be the hands and feet of Christ by continuing to be a light in the darkness.”