Kirk Cameron, the one-time child sitcom star and Evangelical Christian father of six children, has written a children’s book that encourages old-fashioned virtues such as kindness, faithfulness, and self-control. When he approached libraries to read his book to children, though, 54 libraries refused because the book had a Christian theme, unlike the drag-queen readings many of the same libraries promoted. The Indianapolis Public Library, however, reluctantly reversed itself and thousands of people (adults and children) attended. Even as public and private institutions try to force transgenderism on the American people, parents still want their children to have a wholesome mental diet.

Modern Americans are a tolerant people. Since the gay rights movement began in the late 1960s, they’ve concluded that gays and lesbians should not have to hide, nor should they be subject to discrimination. Since 2008, Americans have even come to accept gay marriage.

What Americans didn’t expect was that LGBTQ++ radicals would take over every institution in America, including child-centric institutions (schools, libraries, Disney), and insist that children be taught that biological sex is fake and that the only real thing is “feelings”—which, of course, must be given reality through potentially deadly and certainly body-destroying hormones, along with mutilating surgery. Civil rights morphed into a deadly fantasy that’s systematically being used to strip children’s physical integrity and deny people their First Amendment rights.

One of the front lines in the battle between radical gender activists and normal people is drag queens. Leftists insist that these usually incompetent performers, who present as grotesque parodies of women and whose “humor” is entirely centered around sex and fecal matter, must enter traditional children’s domains: Schools, libraries, street fairs, Christmas shows, etc. And because schools and libraries have come under the sway of leftist administrators, they’re completely onboard with that program.

That’s how it came about that the same libraries that have hosted drag queens on the events calendar refused to allow Kirk Cameron’s reading from his new book, As You Grow, a book about Biblical truth. Drag queens, good; timeless values, bad.

Let me interject for a moment something about religious books and children. When I was little, my father came home from a garage sale with a multi-volume collection of books called Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories. I absolutely adored those books, reading them again and again, from cover to cover. What my dad didn’t realize was that Uncle Arthur was a Seventh-Day Adventist and that the content was entirely grounded in the Bible.

Despite that, I did not become a Seventh-Day Adventist from reading those books, nor did I become a Christian. (Still Jewish.) However, I did learn important lessons about moral decency, honesty, loyalty, kindness, responsibility, etc. Good religion is not corrupting; it’s elevating, and that’s true whether you embrace the core doctrinal tenets or not.

Back to Indiana: The outcry regarding those libraries that chose drag queens over Cameron was so loud that the Indianapolis Public Library reversed course and begrudgingly allowed Cameron to appear. The response from parents in the region was overwhelming, with thousands showing up to hear from a book that advances the values that make a safe, stable, prosperous society for their children:

Hat tip: The Post Millennial.

It’s very easy to get depressed about what’s happening in America. The Biden administration is destroying our borders and our economy. It remains to be seen how resilient America really is. Trump had no chance to repair the eight years of damage that Obama caused, and Biden is doubling down on every Obama policy (letting us know who’s really the president).

What gives me hope is the thousands of people who stood in line to hear Kirk Cameron read something wholesome and uplifting to their children. Sure, there are leftist parents who are either members of the transgender cult or committed to virtue-signaling about it. However, most parents, looking at their healthy, innocent children, want them to stay that way: With their minds and bodies intact and their values elevated, rather than letting radicals debase and destroy those same children.

What also gives me hope is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while, which is that it’s America’s parents who will save America (if she can still be saved). It is they who are pushing back against crazed leftist school boards, encouraging their children not to go to the over-priced indoctrination factories that were once our colleges and universities, and making an outcry when institutions refuse to allow wholesome fare for their children.

So, congratulations, not just to Kirk Cameron, but to every parent who stood in line at the Indianapolis Public Library. In your own way, you are constitutional warriors who are massed in the front line of the ideological battle playing out in America.

Image: Rumble screen grab.