I won’t lie: things in America are bad right now because the left owns the federal government and has achieved ascendency across American institutions. However, the great thing about people who no longer feel they need to look over their shoulders is that they also no longer feel the need to dissimulate about who they are and what they want. Nowhere is this more true than in the area of so-called “transgenderism.” They haven’t just come out of the closet; they’ve achieved the heights and, at least in New York, aren’t shy about saying children are their target.

Timcast News has a video of “NYC Drag Marchers” rockin’ down public streets with their re-made “queer pride” chant. The old chant, which I believe emerged in the 1990s, was “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” That was the “we’re newly out of the closet, and we’re not going back in” version.  

The new version has a “we control society, and there is nothing you can do to stop us” vibe. And so, this time around, the drag crowd is saying what parents across America have already figured out from seeing what’s going on in their children’s classrooms and the media aimed at children: The LGBTQ++ movement, which in its purest form makes biological reproduction impossible, is coming for the children:

NYC Drag Marchers chant “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children” https://t.co/ucK1qM4fv5 pic.twitter.com/OhBguhWwZY

— Timcast News (@TimcastNews) June 24, 2023

Funnily enough, as I watched the video, it looked very familiar to me. Had I seen it before? The grotesque-looking people wearing colorful, exciting costumes while hunting children? Yes, I’m sure I’ve seen it before.

And then, suddenly, it burst upon me: When I was seven, my parents took me to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I loved most of the movie, but it also included a scene that haunted my childhood and gave me nightmares for years to come.

If you remember the convoluted plot Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) is a crazy American inventor lovingly raising his two children, Jemima and Jeremy. Aside from various madcap adventures, the heart of the movie is when he, the children, and his love interest (Truly Scrumptious, played by Sally Ann Howes) discover that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the car that Potts lovingly restored, is a magical flying machine.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang flies Potts, Truly, and the two children to the kingdom of Vulgaria, ruled over by Baron and Baroness Bomburst. The Baroness despises and fears children so passionately that all children in the barony have been lock-upped. Of course, our intrepid main characters right that wrong.

It’s that “lock-upped” children part that sparked my nightmares. To capture the citizens’ children, the Baron and Baroness employ the “Child Catcher,” played with malevolent glee by Robert Helpmann. When the Child Catcher, a repellant character, hunts down Jemima and Jeremy, he dresses himself in a bright costume, flashes candy, and tricks out his paddy wagon to look like a candy store—and it works. The hapless children are taken away (only to be rescued, of course, in the end).

I want you to look at the scene in which the Child Catcher plies his trade and tell me if it’s significantly different in look and intent from the video of those repellant but attractively presented people on the streets of New York:

They’re out in the open now, and it’s up to us to use love, reason, and science to ensure that our children, unlike the naïve Jemima and Jeremy, don’t find themselves in the clutches of today’s child catchers.

Image: Twitter screen grab.