Comedian Bill Maher condemned the sexualization of children and push to expose them to drag and trans ideology, warning that the “tribal” nature of American politics is leading people to abandon the long-held consensus that “exposing kids to an adult world of lurid costumes and garish makeup borders on abuse.”
Maher concluded the satirical segment “New Rules” on his HBO show “Real Time” Friday by asking his audience if they had watched the new documentary “Quiet on Set” that detailed what he described as “the child stars of their day being subjected to obviously inappropriate, highly sexualized degradation” at the children’s programming network Nickelodeon.
He said the revelations exposed on “Quiet on Set” had spread rapidly in Hollywood because “it didn’t just expose a dangerous workplace, it also exposed hypocrisy.”
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The comedian tied the concerns about sexualization of children highlighted in the documentary to contemporary political topics that have dominated the headlines in American politics. “When the evil governor of Florida was saying the exact same thing about kids and creepy stuff at Disney that liberals now find intolerable at Nickelodeon, he was dismissed as a hick and a bigot,” he said.
Maher was referring to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ collaboration with the state Legislature to revoke the special tax status awarded to the Walt Disney World Resort in his state after its parent company spoke out against a bill requiring school officials to refrain from discussing topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity with children in kindergarten through third grade.
“Why would a kids’ content factory like Disney be all that different than the one at Nickelodeon?” Maher asked. Noting that a 2014 CNN report detailed how “at least 35 Disney employees had been arrested for sex crimes against children,” and that former child star Cole Sprouse had alleged that young actresses at Disney were “heavily sexualized,” Maher asserted that “DeSantis wasn’t wrong.”
The comedian lamented that “we’re so tribal now, the left will overlook child-f—ing if the guy from the wrong party calls it out.”
Maher spent the rest of his monologue condemning the sexualization of children that extends beyond Hollywood and industries that cater directly to children, specifically calling out “Instagram moms … who are practically OnlyFansing their itty-bitty beauty queen daughters by having them wear skimpy bikinis and eat bananas to help them build social media stardom.” He referred to these parents as “pimps.”
“People who believe in social justice have agreed this is wrong and this is bad and exposing kids to an adult world of lurid costumes and garish makeup borders on abuse,” he said.
Maher suggested that such individuals were abandoning this principle as of late: “Hurry up and get in the car. We’re late for drag queen story hour.”
While Maher stressed that he doesn’t believe there’s “anything wrong with being a drag queen,” he contended that “maybe it’s time to admit that sometimes drag queen story hour is more for the queen than the kids.”
“When I see a 5-year-old tipping, tipping at a bar under a sign that says, ‘It’s not gonna lick itself,’ do I have to pretend that’s cool in order to keep my liberal ID card? Sorry, I can’t do that.”
Maher added, “If you want kids to be more tolerant, why not have handicapped people read them stories? Kids are more likely to encounter disabled people than drag queens in life.”
“Wokeness is not an extension of liberalism anymore,” he continued. “It’s more often taking something so far that it becomes the opposite. Teaching kids not to hate or judge those who are different? Great. Proud we got there. All for that. But at a certain point, inclusion becomes promotion.”
After sharing his opinion that children are “gullible morons” who will “believe anything and just want to please grown-ups,” Maher warned that “endlessly talking about gender to 6-year-olds isn’t just inappropriate, it’s what the law would call entrapment, which means enticing people into doing something they wouldn’t ordinarily do.”
In response to those who don’t think entrapment is going on with regard to “gender in schools,” Maher suggested they must “not watching enough TikTok videos.”
Maher played two video clips of teachers who work with children at unspecified grade levels discussing or demonstrating how they put their LGBT activism on display in the classroom. He cited these teachers as examples of “a certain kind of activist these days who wants to take heterosexuality: old school, old fashioned, boring, minding its own business heterosexuality, and lump it in with patriarchy and sexism and racism and tell kids ‘wouldn’t it be cool if you were anything but that?’”
“I never used the phrase ‘gay agenda’ because I thought it was mostly nonsense and it is, mostly,” he said.
After playing a clip of a Disney director talking about how she had a “not-at-all secret gay agenda” that consisted of “basically adding queerness” to children’s programming as much as possible, Maher urged fellow liberals to “think about giving kids a break from our culture wars for a minute or at least until the election is over.”
While Maher identifies with the political Left, he has been known to express doubts about certain aspects of progressive orthodoxy in the past. He most recently went viral for acknowledging that abortion was “kind of” murder on “Real Time” last week while insisting that he was “OK with it.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
