NPR Celebrates First U.S. ‘Drag Laureate,’ LGBTQ and Religion (Even Islam?)

June 19th, 2023 4:32 PM

The left-wing push for LGBTQ awareness has dissolved whatever traces of journalistic objectivity that still remained at National Public Radio. Witness reporter Chloe Veltman’s profile on the June 12 edition of the public radio network’s flagship news program All Things Considered: “Nation's first 'drag laureate' kicks off Pride in San Francisco.”

The text version of the radio report was 100% taxpayer-funded counter-culture indulgence, with next-to-zero journalistic content, a liberal network pretending a “drag laureate” is a real thing.

Getting D'Arcy Drollinger ready for her first official appearance as San Francisco drag laureate was a production.

The artist, night club owner and newly appointed government official stood in the living room of her San Francisco apartment as two helpers grappled with a set of bejeweled, custom-made artificial nails and wedged her into a pair of white patent stilettos and a tight, pink skirt suit. Finally, Drollinger stepped out of the house, and into a very busy schedule.

The word "laureate" is most often attached to the winner of a Nobel Prize, or a poet whose job it is to mark official occasions in verse. But a "drag laureate" is something new.

The city's LGBTQ task-force proposed the creation of the drag laureate position around three years ago during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

San Francisco has apparently given up trying to solve its massive on-the-street problems of crime and aggressive homelessness and feels free to indulge its queer emphasis.

On June 7, NPR’s Jason DeRose on June 7 Morning Edition committed some journalistic sacrilege with his wholly one-sided report on how smoothly transgender life and world religion mix.

At the Pride Fest in Santa Monica, Calif., six houses of worship -- five churches and a synagogue -- had booths lined up all in a row.

The Episcopalians offered table bowling. The Lutherans offered temporary rainbow tattoos. A nondenominational church let anyone feeling lucky spin a wheel for prizes -- ranging from coffee mugs featuring the Lamb of God holding a rainbow flag to a T-shirt emblazoned with Jesus wearing a rainbow crown of thorns.

The swag at Beth Chayim Chadashim's booth was pink plastic pens and stickers that read "Happy Pride!" above a rainbow Star of David.

….

More pro-gay God-talk at Pride this year is no accident. It's a national initiative of the progressive Interfaith Alliance, involving Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and others. It's called Faith for Pride, and it's meant, in part, to counter the message of anti-LGBTQ rights legislation in statehouses around the U.S.

DeRose dealt with perhaps the most clashing combo plate – LGBTQ and Islam – by hand-waving away Islam’s clear hostility toward homosexuality. After years of the liberal press strangely ceding to Muslim activists the importance of respecting sharia law and the necessity of hijab head-coverings for women, NPR now feels free to briefly note, then blithely ignore, the actual tenets of the Muslim faith when ideologically convenient.

NPR quoted Ani Zonneveld, founder and president of Muslims for Progressive Values, who insisted the “spirit of Islam” was “how it really advocates for those who are oppressed." Like women in Iran? Like the Taliban in Afghanistan?