Pride Marchers in Drag Chant 'We're Coming for Your Children,' and Conservatives Miss the Sarcasm

A video of participants in New York's annual Drag March chanting "We're here, we're queer, we're coming for your children" has gone viral, seized upon by anti-LGBTQ+ conservatives who either don't get that the chant was uttered in sarcasm, or find it convenient to ignore the obvious.

"New York City kicked off the last weekend of Pride Month with its annual Drag March on Friday," June 23, Newsweek reported. "Hundreds of drag performers marched through Manhattan's East Village in elaborate costumes on their way to the iconic Stonewall Inn."

It was during the march that participants mocked the homophobic right's latest attempts to push the narrative that LGBTQ+ people endanger children.

The anti-gay and anti-trans right predictably circulated video of the march as evidence of their baseless claims after a clip went up on Twitter courtesy of right-wing outlet Timcast News, the project of anti-LGBTQ+ podcaster Tim Pool, Newsweek detailed.

The avid anti-gay crowd devoured the clip, running up "more than 3 million views in less than a day," Newsweek recounted. It didn't take long for a number of right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ politicians and pundits to attach their own messages to the video.

"This movement grooms minors to have mastectomies and castration and fuels a multi billion dollar medical child abuse industry," claimed Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has shared QAnon conspiracy theories in the past and claimed that Jewish-owned "space lasers" caused wildfires.

Greene used the occasion to call for the passage of the so-called "Protect Children's Innocence Act," a measure she has sponsored that would criminalize medically appropriate gender affirmation care for minors on the federal level.

"Specifically, the bill makes it a felony to perform any gender affirming care on a minor and it permits a minor on whom such care is performed to bring a civil action against each individual who provided the care," according to Congress.gov.

The occasion also proved irresistible to anti-LGBTQ+ conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, who posted the clip in a tweet along with the message, "When they tell you who they are, believe them."

Kirk, among other conservative pundits, has promoted the baseless claim that LGBTQ+ people and their allies "groom" children by seeking to ensure that LGBTQ+ youth are not erased, marginalized, and silenced. Earlier this year, Kirk declared on his radio program that "groomers can't reproduce, so instead they recruit. So, they go serve on school boards. And they go do drag queens. And they do all this other sort of disgusting nauseating stuff."

As news sources reported last month, Turning Point USA – of which Kirk is the head – teamed up with a registered sex offender for a "Pastors Summit." As MSNBC noted, "TPUSA summit's corporate sponsors is a Christian fashion company that is led by a registered sex offender, Shawn Bergstrand, who served time in federal prison for attempted 'coercion and enticement' after trying to persuade 'a minor female' to 'engage in sexual activity.'"

The Caitlin Jenner-linked commentator Oli London, who identifies as nonbinary and claimed to be "trans-Korean," posted their own comment on the chant.

"They are not even hiding their intentions anymore now they are saying it out loud," the tweet said.

Some who attended the march told the New York Post that the jape was ill-considered.

"They're in danger every day," Angela Ghiozzo, a mother who attended with her LGBTQ+ son, told The Post. "They're bullied, they're harassed, they're beaten, they're killed. And that's not the right time to make a joke."

Another event attendee, Kelly Autorina, countered that the chant was "all in good fun," and told the Post: "If you're taking it like that, then that's a you problem. Not an us problem."

For all the attention the mocking chant garnered, the anti-LGBTQ+ right did not seem nearly as enthusiastic about talking up another chant that was being uttered in the same march: "We're here, we're queer, we're not going shopping," which appeared to be the predominant chant in the video.