Lawmaker accuses Mayor Lucas of “grooming” children

A Missouri lamaker is voicing concern after Kansas City leaders read a book promoting transgenderism to children for National Reading Day.

Videos posted on Twitter and TikTok showed Mayor Quinton Lucas, city officials and council members reading “Introducing Teddy: A Gentle Story about Gender and Friendship.”

The LGBTQ book is written for children between the ages of 3 and 6 and focuses on a boy, Errol, and his teddy bear friend, Thomas. In the story, Thomas tells Errol that he feels like a “girl teddy” and wishes his name were “Tilly.” Errol tells Thomas he doesn’t care if he’s “a girl teddy or a boy teddy. What matters is that you are my friend.” Thomas then puts his bowtie in his hair because he’s “always wanted a bow instead.”

Brattin

Republican state Sen. Rick Brattin, one of several lawmakers, responded to by posting a video of lawmakers reading Matt Walsh’s bestselling children’s book., “Johnny the Walrus.”

“Recently, the Kansas City mayor and his goons are reading books to groom children, and we’re here to set the record straight and put a stop to this nonsense,” Brattin, of Pleasant Hill, said. “And we’re going to do this by reading ‘Johnny the Walrus.’”

“Johnny the Walrus,” which was published in April 2022, focuses on a boy who believes he’s a walrus and his mother who goes along with her child’s desired identity, regardless of how crazy it sounds. Walsh said the book teaches children to accept who they are biologically, which is their true self.

“Johnny the Walrus” quickly became the bestselling book in Amazon’s “LGBTQ+” category, outraging LGBTQ activists who called on Amazon to remove Walsh’s book from the list. Some Amazon employees even held a “die-in” to protest Walsh’s book, along with other books they deemed “transphobic,” being sold on the site.

“The message of self-acceptance when I was a kid was the most common message in books we read,” Walsh said. “Except now on the left, what they foist on kids is this false self-acceptance of actually rejecting who you really are in favor of a delusion.”

City council members also disagreed over the book selection.

“What was the purpose of picking this book over other great classics?” asked City Councilman Nathan Willett, who declined to participate in the book reading. “The goal should be to promote reading to children, not play into culture wars of the far left. Seems like my colleagues were virtue signaling to social justice warriors rather than promoting reading to children & families.”

In 2023, Kansas City leaders declared the city an LGBTQ “sanctuary city.”

–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice