God bless Ron DeSantis. He has smoked out the groomers. What we have learned from the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill is that the gays want to say and say and say and say and say.

The love that dares not speak its name simply cannot shut up. And what we have known all along is that they are eager to groom the little ones. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus actually sang that they are coming for our children. And now they are having hissy fits that their grooming must stop, at least in Florida and at least among the littlest ones. If you have seen some recent TikToks, the groomers do not intend to stop.

We salute DeSantis and his colleagues. But would you like to know who got there first? Do you want to know the first government that banned the teaching of “non-traditional” sexual relationships to children? The Russians. This was way back in June 2013. And by my estimation, this was when the sexual left, that is, the Democrats, turned against Russia.

Do you remember Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s cozy photo op with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, where they jointly pushed a red button that Hillary incorrectly thought said “reset?” That was in 2009 and was meant to rejuvenate U.S. relations with Putin et al. Care to guess where that ended? Correct, in 2013, roughly when the Russians instituted their federal anti-grooming bill. More than 100 international human rights praised the new law.

The sexual left went nuts like they are doing now. It is a human rights violation if they do not get access to children. At the time, I wrote in The Catholic Thing about the reaction of the gay presidium. Homosexual playwright Harvey Fierstein nearly had an aneurism in The New York Times. He hyperventilated that Russian parents who speak positively about homosexuality could have their children taken away. (Note: this is now happening in the United States over parents objecting to the gender confusion of their children). Fierstein said such parents could be jailed under the Russian law. He said tourists could be jailed.

I was in Russia that summer and decided to see what I could see of these claims. I stayed at the legendary Metropol Hotel right near the Kremlin and within sight of the Lubyanka Prison, where Stalin had so many people shot. As I wrote at The Catholic Thing, I saw a post-op transexual man casually strolling down the street in black Capri pants and a tight sweater open to expose his new breasts. He did not seem to be afraid.

Near the Bolshoi Theater, I spotted three hairy men in dresses. No one seemed to care. So, I went online and searched for “gay Moscow.” Believe me, there is lots of “gay Moscow”; nightclubs, restaurants, even bathhouses. There are even two “gay beaches” in St. Petersburg. Russian friends told me there were openly gay characters on television, gay newsmen, etc.

What Russian leaders were on about, just like DeSantis, was keeping homosexual/trans propaganda out of schools. The sexual left was happy to do business with Putin and his gang up to then. But after the propaganda bill, the “reset” ended. Russia and Putin became the great devil. Was it all over abnormal sex?

In recent days, the serpentine British pundit Douglas Murray has said conservatives have a Putin problem and that using the correct bathroom is the wrong way to consider a foreign policy. I would say to out-and-proud Murray that his friends on the sexual left changed their foreign policy precisely on the question of his favorite sexual act. It started with the Russian laws keeping homosexuality out of the schools.

Murray, who has some very queer ideas about sex, said it is not very important to know which bathroom to use. That little children are being indoctrinated into utterly false notions of human sexuality is one of the most important issues of our time. Murray can sneer all he wants.

That the Russians were right about opposing child grooming does not make them right about what they are doing in Ukraine. It is an illegal war. I condemn it without reservation. But I do know that a part of it is the question of defining the West that Ukraine may join. Does Ukraine join the West that imposes the sexual revolution on EU member states and the rest of the world, the West that withholds EU money from Poland and Hungary because they have passed laws shielding children from sexual propaganda? Or does Ukraine join Poland and Hungary in standing up to the thugs in Brussels?

To be sure, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not about queer sex. It is about empire. Let us hope that Ukraine joins the part of Europe that opposes the authoritarians in both Moscow and Brussels.

The above comes from an April 1 posting by Austin Ruse in Crisis magazine.