Stop the Sexualization of Our Children

One of the most difficult things about watching the radicalization and growing power of the LGBT agenda in recent years has been seeing the sexual revolutionaries targeting children, the casualties of an over-sexualized culture and adult exploitation.

Advocates of this agenda and the sexualization of our youth, being encouraged at the highest levels of government, have been hard at work normalizing their agenda, creatively seeking ways to expose children to sexual material. Their goal is to sow confusion and manipulate children. From obscene books in school libraries to explicit content in entertainment, children from preschool to high school are faced with sexually charged content, while the adults in their life do nothing or very little to protect them.

Take this recent undercover interview by Project Veritas with Joseph Bruno, the dean of students at a private school in Chicago. During the interview, Bruno boasts about how he brought an LGBT “health center” to the school during Pride Week. Bruno gleefully recounts how the presenter passed various sex toys around so that children could play with them.

The investigator then asked whether the parents would be mad if they found out. “No,” Bruno replied, seemingly puzzled by the question. “It’s queer sex.” He also noted that he had brought in a drag queen, and that he doesn’t ask permission from the school’s trustees for such activities, because he knows that their response would be, “that’s wonderful!”

In other words, the parents and trustees accept that this is all simply a part of a modern education at their child’s $40,000/year private school.

Balenciaga and the Sexualization of Children

The word innocent means “free from harm.”

The innocence of a child is freedom from an awareness of evil – living and acting as sons and daughters made in the image and likeness of God. Since parents have given children their life, welcoming them, they are the primary educators. They are the ones who must create an atmosphere that respects the immutable dignity of their children, teaching them love for God, self, and neighbor, providing them with a well-rounded education that fosters a life of virtue and holiness – remaining ever vigilant to whatever or whomever poses harm.

Although modern parents and educators seem to have completely forgotten this, childhood can and should be a time of innocence and wonder. It should be a time for children to explore the world and develop their personalities without being burdened with the complexities and moral problems that face adults.

In recent years, however, under the guise of LGBT “Pride,” radical activists have deliberately sought to sexualize children.

One stark example of this is the controversy sparked by a recent advertising campaign by the high-end fashion company Balenciaga. This company, which has ties with prominent celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, recently released marketing photos depicting two young girls. Disturbingly, the girls are holding teddy-bears dressed in what is known as “bondage” gear.

That is to say, the stuffed animals were dressed as if they were participants in BDSM, i.e., a set of perverse and violent sexual practices. One of the bears even appeared to have swollen eyes, as if it had been beaten up. Even worse (if it could even be worse), is that quietly tucked into another recent Balenciaga campaign was a copy of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on child porn laws.

In a sign that some remnants of sanity remain in our culture, the backlash against the advertising campaign was swift. Ultimately, Balenciaga was forced to delete its Instagram account.

However, though people on both sides of the political aisle have condemned the images, some commentators have pointed out that celebrities associated with Balenciaga have yet to cut ties. As one courageous commentator pointed out on the far-left Daily Beast, numerous celebrities and companies have been immediately “cancelled” for far less egregious crimes.

“That people aren’t outraged, and skipping work with their posters, or going to the courthouse or going to Balenciaga, and stars aren’t wiping their social media and Instagram with all their Balenciaga gear is disgusting,” said Jeff Schroeder in a rant that went viral on social media. “Kim Kardashian, shame on you. You’re a billionaire, you don’t need this company.”

What Schroeder didn’t note, however, is that one reason the outrage on the left has been so muted, is that hyper-sexualizing kids is being increasingly normalized.

For decades now, the entertainment industry has told young girls, especially, that in order to be popular, famous, and powerful, they needed to flaunt their sexuality the way their favorite pop stars do. This messaging has reached new lows in recent years, with many pop stars resorting to ever more extreme and sexually explicit antics in order to grab headlines.

Increasingly, however, it is the LGBT movement that is the source of the most egregious violations of childhood innocence. Many LGBT activists now openly proclaim that children should be exposed to highly graphic sexual displays, in order to teach them how to be “tolerant” and more “welcoming.”

Schools and libraries should have “drag queens” in to dance provocatively for children and read books, normalizing every possible sexual lifestyle. Children should see nudity and LGBT “kink” at gay pride parades. Children should know all the bizarre and dangerous practices and drugs needed to present as a different gender.

As one “transgender” teacher in Louisiana recently put it, the whole point is to confuse children as much as possible about sexuality and gender. “The kids are all confused and asking why I have a mustache if I’m a girl, if I’m Mr. Banghart now, why am I trying to look like a boy, etc.,” teacher Blaine Banghart wrote in a social media post.

The teacher added: “Though some of the reactions are hurtful (I’m not mad- they’re kids and don’t mean harm), I’m mostly just enjoying the confusion about ‘what’ I am.”

It’s enough to make your blood boil.

Bishops Tell It Like It Is

In a recent interview with the National Catholic Register, Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane, Washington, spoke some hard truths about the predatory nature of the radical LGBT agenda.

Bishop Daly is the chairman of the Catholic Education Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). In the interview he raised the alarm about how even some Catholic schools are allowing students to “pick your own pronouns,” and justifying it as “being affirming and welcoming.”

The bishop argued that this encouragement of gender ideology is a form of “misplaced compassion” that is leading to gender ideology becoming “rampant in society.”

He pulled no punches, arguing that “affirming” children in their gender confusion leads children to become “the modern orphans of society,” who are being “experimented upon” by “adults who really do not have the best interests of young people at heart.”

Indeed. So much of what is happening in our schools and entertainment is a form of “experimentation” on children by predatory adults who have no respect for the beauty of childhood. They seem entirely to have forgotten that such a thing as innocence exists.

For parents the explosion in radical LGBT ideology, particularly on matters of gender, can be profoundly disorienting.

Recognizing this crisis, at least two U.S. bishops have produced excellent educational materials, walking Catholics through this issue from the standpoint of Catholic teaching. The first, by Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Arlington Diocese, is called “A Catechesis on the Human Person and Gender Ideology.” The second, by Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee, is called “Catechesis and Policy on Questions Concerning Gender Theory.”

Both bishops point out that children are at grave risk from this radical ideology.

“The acceptance and/or approval of a person’s claimed transgender identity is particularly dangerous in the case of children, whose psychological development is both delicate and incomplete,” wrote Bishop Burbidge, noting that in such a time of confusion, what children need is clarity and affirmation of their God-given identity and dignity.

“First and foremost, a child needs to know the truth: He or she has been created male or female, forever. Affirming a child’s distorted self-perception or supporting a child’s desire to ‘be’ someone other than the person (male or female) God created, gravely misleads and confuses the child about ‘who’ he or she is.”

Archbishop Listecki wisely set out a series of policies for his diocese, which includes a ban on the use of “preferred pronouns” in Catholic organizations. “Permitting the designation of a preferred pronoun, while often intended as an act of charity, instead promotes an acceptance of the separability of biological sex and ‘gender’ and thus opposes the truth of our sexual unity,” wrote the archbishop.

Fight for Innocence

Jesus did care a great deal about the young and innocent, which is why some of Christ’s strongest words were reserved for those who would harm children: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,” He said, “it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).

The natural response of adults to any attempt to steal the innocence of children is to feel outrage, and then to work to protect those children. However, because of the propaganda of the LGBT activists, many parents, teachers and moral leaders quake in their boots at the thought of speaking up against the ideologues, lest they be accused of being “bigoted” or (heaven forbid) “unwelcoming.”

Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who protects His flock from the ravages of wolves. It is good to see these bishops speaking up. As Bishop Daly put it, the bishops are “successors to the apostles and that doesn’t mean membership in a country club, it means that we have to protect our flock.”

Combating the sexualization and exploitation of children by adults requires courage, focused attention, and an unaverred determination. Let us hope that more spiritual leaders, parents, educators, and leaders will speak up, and fight for the innocence of our children, keeping them free from harm.