Victoria’s hard-left Labor government will keep rolling out its radical Rainbow Libraries Toolkit after an impassioned vote to stop the program was defeated in parliament this week.
A push by the Liberal opposition to end the project was voted down 22 to 14 in the Legislative Council on Wednesday.
Launched on Wear it Purple Day late last year, the program aims to further entrench extremist LGBT ideology in Victoria, especially among the state’s children.
According to the Victorian government, the aim of the project is “supporting libraries across the state to provide more inclusive spaces for Victoria’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender diverse, intersex, queer and asexual (LGBTIQA+) communities with a new toolkit.
In practice, the program means that children as young as five in Victoria will be asked to provide their pronouns and “drag queen story time” events will be promoted throughout the state’s libraries, while so-called gendered language will be avoided and books on “gender diversity” added to shelves.
The program was devised by the far-left Labor government as a reaction to increasing public outrage over the presence of drag queens, “rainbow-youth” activities and other LGBT initiatives in the state’s libraries.
The Victorian ALP said: “The toolkit was established in response to a need for better information and training…following a rise in the vilification of LGBTIQA+ communities and targeting of LGBTIQA+ inclusive events, including drag story time events for rainbow young people held at libraries.”
“We will always back our LGBTIQA+ communities as we work to build a state where all people, regardless of their sexuality or gender identity, can live wholly and freely,” said Harriet Shing, the homosexual ex-Equality Minister who launched the project.
Yet the launch of program provoked anger among Victorian Liberals, with the party accusing the ALP of engaging in “social engineering” and of promoting a “divisive” and “toxic” gender ideology towards kindergarten-aged children.
The progenitor of the push against the program was Liberal MP for Western Victoria Bev McArthur, who tabled the petition against the toolkit, gaining over 4,700 signatures and triggering the debate this week in the state parliament.
Ms McArthur said the program was “another example of the gender ideology that has become a pervasive and toxic influence across the Western world”, and not about equality or LGBT rights, calling it a distraction employed by Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan and yet another weapon to be wielded by LGBT activists.
“Have no doubt, this toolkit isn’t about inclusion. It’s a political weapon for ideologues,” Ms McArthur said.
“It’s a deliberate move by Premier Allan’s government to prioritise social engineering over the real issues plaguing our state – a crumbling economy, a union-choked construction sector, an energy outlook that gets bleaker by the day, and now criminals waltzing out on bail.”
Education expert Kevin Donnelly and Bella d’Abrera of the Institute of Public Affairs also critiqued the move.
Mr Donnelly told Sky News that “sexuality and gender are overwhelmingly binary and it’s wrong to confuse children otherwise” and that “there is no place for pushing gender fluidity.”
“There is not a single circumstance that exists where it is appropriate for a librarian to be having discussions about gender and sexuality with other people’s children,” Ms d’Abrera said.
“Parents should not have to worry about their child being exposed to highly sexualised questioning by strangers when they visit a library” and that “this kind of content has no place in a library, our kindergartens or our schools.”
The Rainbow Libraries Toolkit is just the latest in a series of extreme and anti-natural LGBT initiatives in Victoria, most of which were instigated by the state’s long-term Labor government.
In 2014, Victoria appointed Australia’s first Minister for Equality, while in 2015 the state appointed the nation’s first Commissioner for LGBTIQA+ Communities.
The Victorian government also introduced “gender changeable” birth certificates in 2020.
The government has also overseen the construction of the mammoth Victorian Pride Centre in St Kilda and the approval of the Big Rainbow complex in Daylesford.
Last year the State Library hosted events for kids as part of homosexual festival Midsumma, including a gay disco and “rainbow-themed” storytime sessions with an LGBT dancer, magician, writer, and a drag queen named “Dandrogyny”, and a massive petition against it was ignored.
Header image: Left, Premier Jacinta Allan at a homosexual event earlier this year. Right, Labor MP Vicki Ward celebrates the vote with a drag queen (Facebook).
