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Mainstream Outlet Defends “We’re Coming For Your Children” Chant, “Used For YEARS At Pride Events”


WLTR reported last week on footage of participants in a New York City drag march chanting, “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”

NYC Drag Marchers: “We’re Coming For Your Children”

The marchers gathered at Tompkins Square Park and took to the streets until descending upon Stonewall Inn.

Here's the footage:

On Tuesday, NBC News published an article defending the chant, "we're coming for your children," said by some participants at the event.

The outlet said the chant has been "used for years at Pride events."

"The 'coming for your children' chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people," NBC News tweeted Tuesday evening.

In the article, titled "‘We’re Coming For Your Children’ chant at NYC Drag March elicits outrage, but activists say it’s taken out of context," Tyler Kingkade wrote:

To conservative pundits, activists and lawmakers, the video confirmed the allegations they’ve levied in recent years that the LGBTQ community is “grooming” children.

But to Brian Griffin, the original organizer of the NYC Drag March, if that’s the worst they heard, it’s only because he wasn’t there this year.

Griffin said he chanted obscene things in the past, like “Kill, kill, kill, we’re coming to kill the mayor,” and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during marches. People at the Drag March regularly sing “God is a lesbian.”

“It’s all just words,” Griffin said. “It’s all presented to fulfill their worst stereotypes of us.”

The “coming for your children” chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people. And in this case, they said, right-wing activists are jumping on a single video to weaponize an out-of-context remark to further stigmatize the queer community.

Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly referred to advocates for LGBTQ rights as “groomers,” associating people who oppose laws that restrict drag performances or classroom discussions of gender identity with pedophiles. The charge is an echo of a decades-old trope anti-gay activists have used to paint the community as a threat to the country’s youths, an allegation that some advocates say endangers LGBTQ people. And the intense reaction to the video has scared some attendees, who insist the quip has been taken out of context.

Twitter users reacted to the article:

The article only gets worse.

Kingkade admitted the New York City drag march, where the chant was captured on video, was reportedly organized by the Radical Faeries.

The group's co-founder, Henry "Harry" Hay Jr., was a NAMBLA activist.

NAMBLA, according to Wikipedia, is a "pedophilia and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States."

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From NBC News:

A leaderless group of activists with the Radical Faeries, a loose-knit LGBTQ collective, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a charity and protest group, have helped organize the march in more recent years, according to HuffPost. There are no sponsorships by companies at the Drag March.

Paul Joseph Watson had this response to the NBC News piece, asking if it was the "biggest self-own ever."



 

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