“What is so rare as a day in June?” asked the poet James Russell Lowell.  A favorite of my mother’s, the poem rejoices in the return of cowslips to the “meadows green” and celebrates birds and blossoms and the “deluge of summer”.

But like a madman who sees the delicate beauty of a neck as nothing more than a rag to wring with his bare hands, deranged deviants have twisted the rare days of June into something called Pride Month.  Similarly, they’ve hijacked the rainbow from the hands of God, and commissioned it into filth to lure unsuspecting innocents of all ages, but especially the young who are naturally drawn to bright colors and festival sounds.

And these predators come.  As predictably as moths to a flame, they jingle and jangle and laugh as they make their way to Main Street, USA in displays like “leather daddy choking and whipping the bare butt of a younger man tied up on a float in West Hollywood’s Pride parade.”  They come to teach kids to wave happily at the male twerker in Minneapolis, who grinds his large fleshy butt just feet away from perplexed little girls, wearing nothing but his briefs and a smile.  They come by the hundreds of thousands to watch completely naked men and women perform on bicycles in Seattle.

In America’s heartland, they bedeck themselves with balloons and flowers and lure children by dancing with jingtinglers, blowing their floofloovers, and beating their blumbloopas.

One can’t help but think of the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as he hunts the streets of fictional Vulgaria for children.  In the British musical of the same name he sings: 

And sometimes I lure them, those dear little lambs
With goodies and gooeys and chewys and jams
Gobstoppers, gumdrops, and liquorice treats
Cookies and chocolates and all kinds of sweets

Strawberry lollies with peppermint strands
Treacle tarts, ice creams, I meet all demands
Then when I get the dears into my hands
They’re BANISHED AND VANISHED and damned....

Two years ago, perhaps with her thinking abilities impaired by fascist lockdowns, a Washington Post writer declared, “Yes, kink belongs at Pride.  And I want my kids to see it.”  The writer, not surprisingly in a nontraditional relationship herself wrote:

When my own children caught glimpses of kink culture, they got to see that the queer community encompasses so many more nontraditional ways of being, living, and loving.

After sharing a touching story of how her daughter (a toddler) had inquired why a bare-chested man with suspenders clipped to a leather thong was being spanked by the man behind him, she concluded:

If we want our children to learn and grow from their experiences at Pride, we should hope that they’ll encounter kink when they attend.  How else can they learn about the scope and vitality of queer life?

This year, a New York Post journalist penned “This Pride month, fellow gays, keep your kinks at home — and away from kids”.  Discussing the previously mentioned viral video from West Hollywood of what was described as BDSM (formerly S&M but now part of a larger “spectrum” like everything else), he wrote:

It should go without saying that performing or even simulating kink-related sex acts in front of children is wildly wrong.  Unfortunately, this wasn’t some one-off incident.

Apparently, it does have to be said, and taught afresh.  And far from being one-off incidents, they are growing exponentially.

The reporter who initially filmed the BDSM display wrote:

Tons of kids were present -- thousands of people, including families, lined both sides of the public boulevard, yelling & cheering.  Sunny Sunday afternoon.  No gatekeeping possible.

In other words, simulating kink-related sex acts in front of children, at least in this city, was both widely accepted and encouraged.

A simple search of Pride month celebrations brings up a plethora of disturbing images — especially disturbing because of children’s attendance and participation in hypersexualized events seemingly targeting them.

The perversion of this time is discouraging, but let’s not forget there are millions standing in the gap.  Despite what the internet or television shows us, all is not lost — they’d just like us to think it is.

They are still out there — regular moms and dads working hard every day, teaching their children biblical values and morals, keeping childhood a sacrosanct time of innocence and safety, imagination and hope. 

There are still children lying in pastures making pictures in the clouds, wondering where baby bunnies come from, and praying to God for grandma to make cookies tomorrow.

We must keep fighting for all of them. If you can have any positive impact on a child’s life, do it today. Even the smallest things we count as unimportant can be the memory of a lifetime or the influence that saves.

And teach the child in your life what June is really about:

We may shut our eyes but we cannot help knowing

That skies are clear and grass is growing;

The breeze comes whispering in our ear,

That dandelions are blossoming near,

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,

That the river is bluer than the sky,

That the robin is plastering his house hard by….

Susan D. Harris can be reached at www.susandharris.com.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.