MICHAEL KNOWLES (HOST): I don't know how you can watch this and not conclude that the performers are pedophiles. I don't use that word lightly. I know a lot of people on the right use that word and they fling it around and they use it imprecisely. I don't see how you can dance around in a thong or in a leather harness in front of babies and toddlers if you are not a pedophile. So, I would bet, if not the farm, I'd bet a lot of my money that that's the case and that's being normalized. I don't see how these parents should be permitted to keep their children. They're abusing their children. They're sexually abusing their children by taking them to these events. I don't see how whatever company is hosting this should be allowed to keep its doors open. All of this should be shut down by the heavy hand of the state. All of these people, other than the children, should be arrested and some of them should face pretty severe consequences. That all goes without saying.
When the conservatives said that the drag queen reading hour for all the little kids -- all these weird drag queens who really, really are gung ho about spending time with a lot of really, really little kids, when they said that those guys might be pedos and creeps and sexual abusers and then at drag queen story hour, a number of them turned out to be convicted child molesters. Wow. Surprise, surprise. Everybody said this is being normalized, this is being normalized. And that's true. There is a slippery slope, of course. The conservatives are always right about the slippery slope. We've never been wrong. We've never once been wrong when we say, golly, what they're doing now, in five years, it's going to be X, Y or Z. We've never once been wrong about that.