Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

by Jules Gomes.

Editor’s Note: This timely piece from Church Militant reports yet another case of “lawfare” being used to shut down freedom of speech on LGBT issues, this time targeting Lyle Shelton’s blog post about Drag Queen Storytime in a Brisbane City Council library early this year. Read the original article here.

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Two drag queens, whose “performance” led to the suicide of a Catholic student, are suing prominent writer and politician Lyle Shelton for describing them as “dangerous role models for children.”

Shelton announced Wednesday that drag queens “Queeny” and “Diamond Good-Rim” had decided to take him to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal to have the case heard before a judge for vilification under the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Law 1991.

The drag queen-duo triggered national controversy after conservative campaigners protested against their genderqueer indoctrination of children at the “Drag Queen Storytime” in Brisbane Square Library in January.

The incident, filmed and uploaded to social media, resulted in the suicide of traditionalist Catholic protest leader Wilson Gavin, who was subject to intense online bullying by pro-LGBTQ Australians.

Gavin, the 21-year-old president of the University of Queensland branch of the Liberal National Club (UQLNC), had led a group of between 15–20 demonstrators to the library, chanting “drag queens are not for kids.”

Shelton’s blog, posted three days after the suicide, accused the drag queens and LGBTIQA+ activists of “baying for his [Gavin’s] blood” and turning “their vile vitriol at Wilson Gavin into faux forgiveness after he threw himself under a train on Monday.”

“Wilson did not need [their] forgiveness. He did nothing wrong,” wrote Shelton, author of I Kid You Not: Notes from 20 Years in the Trenches of the Culture Wars.

“The wrongdoing is done by those who put drag queens in front of children and who want to spread their radical sexual expressionism and gender confusion to children everywhere,” Shelton blogged.

‘Anti-Christian Elitism’

Speaking to Church Militant, Australia-based commentator David Robertson said there was “a disturbing, growing tendency within some sections of Australian society towards a fundamentally anti-Christian elitism and intolerance.”

“Questioning whether children should be sexualized by drag queen acts is considered immoral and illegal, but allowing attacks on Christians, mockery and blasphemy is fine,” lamented Robertson, director of the Third Space forum.

In June, the Queensland Human Rights Commission (QHRC) issued a summons compelling Shelton to appear before it for conciliation after the drag queens lodged a complaint for vilification under the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Law 1991.

The conciliation meeting on Aug. 13 failed to be resolved. Legally, the complainants have 28 days in which to file against this action or the legal action lapses.

“I am about to be forced to appear before a government tribunal because I blogged about the harms of having LGBTIQA+ drag queens read to children in public libraries … I just didn’t expect it to happen so quickly,” Shelton wrote in a legal fundraising appeal on his website.

“Legal action is easy for LGBTIQA+ political activists,” Shelton explained. They are backed by the taxpayer-funded LGBTI Legal Service, which over the past three years received more than $400,000 from the pockets of ordinary Queenslanders, according to page 12 of its annual report.”

“If I lose there, I could be fined. If I refuse to pay a fine in protest against a judgment which impinges on the precious human right of freedom of speech, I could be sent to jail and have a criminal record,” Shelton commented.

In his defense before the QHRC conciliation committee, Shelton stated: “I believe all people are equal but not all ideas are equal. Truth exists and error exists.”

“As a long-time campaigner against genderqueer ideology, including the dangerous and harmful idea that gender is fluid, I did some research on the two drag queens that were reading to children that day.”

Shelton said that he wrote the blog based on material publicly available on the two drag queens’ social media pages, “pointing out the error of exposing children to such role models.”

“I will make no apology for arguing that drag queens are not for kids. I will make no apology for arguing that advocates of genderqueer theory and the so-called adult entertainment industry are dangerous role models for children,” he emphasized.

“My alleged crime was to be moved by the courageous stand of Wilson Gavin and the young people who peacefully and courageously protested drag queen storytime at a Brisbane City Council Library in January of this year,” he told the QHRC.

The pro-life and pro-marriage author-activist also declared his faith in Jesus Christ and in Christian teaching that all human beings are created equal in the image and likeness of God.

Exposing the Truth

In his blog post, Shelton exposed Queeny as “a woman who goes by the name of Johnny Valkyrie” and “is crowdfunding under the name of Jean Genie to help pay for [her friend’s] breasts to be surgically sliced off so she can present as a man.”

He also revealed that “the homoeroticized name” Diamond Good-Rim was “a reference to the anus, [and] should be enough to ring alarm bells in the minds of thinking parents let alone the geniuses at Brisbane City Council who thought it was a good use of [taxpayers’] resources to put him in front of kids.”

“Good-Rim is a 2019 winner of an X Award from the adult entertainment industry. This is an industry that exploits mainly (but not exclusively) vulnerable women for the sexual entertainment of mainly (but not exclusively) men,” Shelton wrote, posting highly provocative sexual imagery from Good-Rim’s social media posts on his blog.

“Let’s hope the kiddies watching Drag Queen Storytime last Sunday don’t go exploring on Good-Rim’s Facebook page. Or ask their mum what ‘good rim’ means in the wonderful world of drag queens,” he noted.

Defending Shelton as “a good man,” Robertson explained to Church Militant how “the progressive elites are unable to defend their beliefs rationally, so instead they resort to intimidation, mockery and ultimately the law.”

“Thankfully there are a growing number of Christians and others who are standing up to this authoritarianism,” Robertson remarked.

In 2016, a homofascist activist drove a “car bomb” into the Australian Christian Lobby’s Canberra office where Shelton was managing director. Following the incident, Shelton writes, a prominent rainbow political activist, Michael Barnett, placed Shelton’s home address on the internet to intimidate him and his wife and four children.