A viral video surfaced Sunday that had conservatives rushing to decry the over-sexualization of young children, while progressives defensively argued that normalizing non-heterosexual identities was necessary for children to be respectful of others.
The video shows a woman reading through a book called the “Gay BCs,” with a young, seemingly special needs boy, learning the alphabet by associating the letters with sexual or gendered terminology like “B is for bi,” “C is for coming out,” “I is for intersex,” and “Q is for queer.”
It’s not immediately clear when the video was recorded, but the book that is apparently being used was released in 2019 by Matt Webb, who said he wanted to create a work that allowed children aged 4 to 8 to begin dialoguing about sexual orientation and gender identity early in their lives.
“I just thought of other little 5-year-olds who are just kind of starting to notice things and thought what would be the best thing for them that would be something that is inviting, but also something that they could use their own words to communicate,” Webb said. “You think about school and how you’re taught the same lessons year after year, and you think it really doesn’t matter, but at the same time, it’s reinforcing. The book is normalizing how people identify and normalizing how allies see themselves and their friends.”
Where Webb sees “normalization,” conservatives and Christians see indoctrination and brainwashing. “It’s a peculiar religion,” one such commenter remarked.
