ROPE Report

This morning I was reading a post on the wall of a friend. It was an open letter to Braum’s explaining that they would no longer shop with Braum’s because they are one of a group of sponsors for something called, “Pride on The Plaza”. “Pride On The Plaza” is the June event in a full yearly calendar cycle of something called, “Live On The Plaza” – monthly events held in the Plaza District of Oklahoma City.

Braum’s and the other sponsors in the screenshot, sponsor ALL the monthly events in the monthly Live On The Plaza, which includes the June Pride event.

Here’s the thing – I’m about liberty. “Do what you want”, is essentially my motto. BUT, there is one enormous caveat. You can’t harm others in any way during the commission of you “doing what you want”.

I personally don’t care if you want to dress in drag and perform – FOR ADULTS. I personally don’t care if you want to go see drag performances AS AN ADULT. The problem with any drag event held in a public space, however, is the propensity for children to see that event.

Children – as I’ve said multiple hundreds of times – are not adults. I don’t care if you’re an adult and think your child will love a drag performance because it’s harmless fun – they aren’t going to get it. What they WILL get, however, is that the women they’re watching don’t look like any human XX chromosome female they see on the street and that’s confusing for them.

What they WILL do is copy the behavior they’re seeing – because that’s what kids do. Because drag is solely about sex, this is a problem. Children are not ready to understand what is and isn’t healthy for them – or even what they do and don’t want on an emotional level. Because of that, the only proper way to raise a child for the benefit of that child, is to protect the innocence of that child until they’re old enough to determine for themselves what they want to be and do.

In fact, I will argue that the only way to protect a society from eating itself (which is what we’re seeing now on a very large scale) is to protect the innocence of the children in that society until they are able to make determinations for themselves.

We’ve literally, seemingly lost the desire to protect our kids from influences other than the neutral today, however and public drag shows are just a small part of the non-neutral environments we’re allowing them to be a part of. Screens – at school and at home – are the primary cause of the loss of innocence of children and parents and teachers and other adults are allowing children access to developmentally inappropriate material DAILY.

So, fine, send a communication to Braum’s and tell them you won’t support their products if they’re going to support the loss of innocence of children…

BUT, if you’re going to single out Braum’s and the other sponsors of the Plaza Live events, do this too, or you’re not really accomplishing much other than resourcing your family’s dairy needs:

1. Go to the Oklahoma City Council meetings and make it plain to them that you object to tax dollar support of ANY public event that could harm the innocence of children attending.

2. STOP FUNDING THE OKLAHOMA ARTS COUNCIL and write a letter to them telling them to stop booking public events that aren’t appropriate for children. Here is the link explaining how the Arts Council is the driving force behind the Plaza District in general.

3. Write the directors of the 16th Street Plaza District, Rachael CRAWFORD – Executive Director and Casey Longacre-marketing assistant and tell them the same thing that you’ve posted on social media about your lack of support for public drag shows and other public activities that support the loss of innocence of children.

4. Find a group of parents who want screens removed from classrooms and go to your school’s School Board meetings to protest until that Board removes screens from classrooms and begins to teach the “old fashioned” way in which students learn best and are least affected by developmentally inappropriate material.

5. Find a group of parents who will CONTINUALLY go to Board meetings and CONTINUE to complain about ANY developmentally inappropriate material in your child’s school (or better yet, take them out and homeschool them yourself – see Homeschool Oklahoma or our friends at Constitutional Home Educators Alliance for help with that).

6. TAKE SCREENS AWAY FROM YOUR CHILDREN! Simply don’t let YOUNG children use screens OF ANY KIND, and when they get old enough (early TEENS) to have some responsibility with a phone, dog the HECK out of the thing with parental controls and DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO USE THEM WHEN YOU ARE NOT AROUND TO MONITOR. Don’t let children have ANY screens in their rooms at night, period. Not a TV, not a computer, not a phone.

If you’re unwilling to do at least three of the things on the list above, please stop posting to social media about your outrage that there are drag queens in the Plaza District dancing for children. You’re right, it’s bad, but boycotting Braum’s solves very little if anything. If you really want to commit to protecting the innocence of children and our society, you’ll really do it, you won’t post on social media and consider your job completed. The innocence of our society’s children is of paramount importance. Posting to social media is easy, but putting the breaks on the wholesale destruction of the psyche of our children requires way more effort than that.