Metro East Sun

Gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey is calling out Collinsville Library to stop its “drag queen” activities for children. 

"The Collinsville Library officials and board members supporting this propagandizing are active participants in child abuse,” Bailey said. “They should be removed and the process that led to taxpayer money being used to sexualize children should be investigated. Public libraries are taxpayer funded institutions intended to broadly share ideas and knowledge; they aren't mechanisms for Marxist activists to sexualize kids, push pornography and depravity on kindergartners. Seven- and eight-year-olds don't care about politics and they don't think about sex. Only people who have never had a child could believe otherwise. As governor, I will bar state funding to libraries hosting 'drag queen' anything and pushing political propaganda to children.”

Collinsville Memorial Public Library will host a June 3 "storytime" event in which volunteer drag queen Chasity Valentino will read to children. The event has resulted in backlash from the community, according to the Madison Record.

"I see it as an excuse for grown adults to normalize their sexual behavior to young children," Edwardsville resident Jennifer Sexton said. "It’s predatory and grooming in nature.”

An Illinois State University student outed so-called “drag pedagogy” advocating for “drag story hour.” The student noted a text assigned in class that was an academic advocacy piece on introducing cross-dressing to children.

“We were assigned this article to read for the week and had a 30-minute whole-class discussion about how this is a good idea to do, and if people don’t like it, oh well, it’s not their classroom,” the student said in a text obtained by McLean County Times.

Bailey has received support from Illinois Family Action, Illinois Right to Life, Illinois Federation for Right to Life and Lake County Right to Life. Bailey, a well-known conservative Republican, is pro-life and pro-gun rights and has claimed that Illinois families are his first priority. 

If elected, Bailey has promised to fight for parental rights, lower taxes and serious budgetary reform.