Drag Race star Courtney Act has slammed Liberal senator Alex Antic for accusing her of grooming children.
On 7 November, Antic accused ABC’s Play School and the former The Bi Life host of the heinous act after the latter read a story about dressing up.
“Why is the ABC grooming children with this sort of adult content?” the Liberal political official said during a Senate meeting.
Antic’s outlandish claim was immediately refuted by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young who described his statement as “deeply, deeply offensive.” (per The Guardian).
“Grooming is a really serious matter. It is not for being played with by conservative senators to make headlines,” she added.
ABC’s managing director David Anderson echoed similar sentiments at the time, stating: “We are not grooming Australian children. What were are doing, that is about dress up.”
Anderson and Hanson-Young weren’t the only individuals to slam Antic’s accusations.
On 20 November, Act condemned the liberal senator on Twitter when she retweeted a clip of her recent interview on The Project.
“Showing queer kids straight content won’t turn them straight. Showing straight kids queer content won’t turn them queer,” she wrote.
“Your queer kids will be queer regardless of whether you show them examples. It just depends on how much shame you want them to carry into their lives.”
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In the attached clip, the Drag Race star expressed her shock over Antic’s harmful and dangerous accusation.
“I was really taken aback that I would be accused of such a thing because grooming is really serious… and to use terms of abuse when no abuse is actually happening, really takes away from the occasions when it is happening,” she said.
“I’m on television, reading a children’s book, there was nothing untoward about it. It was really quite a shocking thing to be accused of.”
The former Dancing with the Stars contestant went on to say that the reason Antic targeted her was due to him sexualising her identity.
“We’ve all agreed that women can wear pants, so it felt like a very peculiar thing for him to zoom in on,” she explained.
“The term grooming was used because somebody like Senator Antic might see my identity as sexualised. The thing that makes me different from him is my sex life or who I have sex with.
“And because I’m attracted to men, and I’m a male person who’s attracted to men, that sort of reduces my whole identity… obviously, I’m much more than just that.”
She went on to say that kids “just see colour, sparkles and fun” before stating that the hate also stems from transphobia.
“I think maybe what those detractors are trying to say is, we’re scared of trans people or we don’t want our kids to be trans,” she added.
Watch Act’s full interview here or below.
Showing queer kids straight content won’t turn them straight. Showing straight kids queer content won’t turn them queer. Your queer kids will be queer regardless of whether you show them examples. It just depends on how much shame you want them to carry into their lives. https://t.co/VxUN7mGcgM
— Courtney Act (@courtneyact) November 20, 2022
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