Over this past Christmas, my wife and I navigated these familiar converging challenges of caring for young children over the break: they’re completely out of their routines; the weather’s not assured to be hospitable to wobblers and toddlers; you often can’t tell what day of the week it is between Christmas and New Years; and we’re skint.
So, at my wife’s suggestion, we made an excursion to Dun Laoghaire – it’s actually quite a magical experience; our children still feel that a Dart journey together is a full-on adventure.
Dun Laoghaire Library was on the cards; they’ve been plenty of times before and they’re usually excited to charge around before eventually settling on whatever picture book piques their interest. If you’re unfamiliar with the library, there’s a designated child-friendly space on one of the upper floors: with a central area of open floor and soft seating for parents to sit and read to their children (or, more often, for parents to scroll on their phones while their kids charge around like maniacs… not me, though… maybe once, God forgive me).
Walking into the Library on this day though, I actually paid heed to the flyers and booklets placed around the children’s area. One booklet caught my attention immediately: beautifully printed and bound, with ample copies stacked around the library; ‘Read with Pride Reading Guide 2025: 100 great LGBTQ+ books for ages 0-18’. This booklet was produced by Children’s Books Ireland and is available to read here.
I’d never heard of it before seeing it during this visit, but a quick search online yields that this guide was published in June of 2025 and was even spotlighted in the RTEjr book club – so, you know it’s good. What’s contained in the guide? How about ‘You’re Fabulous as You Are’ for your 0-2 year old? Or, ‘If it’s Pride and You Know it’ also for your 0-2 year old?
Let’s go a bit older: what about ‘Mr Wolf Goes to the Ball’ for your 2-4 year old? Or, ‘Marley’s Pride’ for your 5-8 year old? The latter is a “whirlwind of cheer, and a celebration of being transgender, Black, and neurodivergent” according to the synopsis. None of those working for you? Not to worry, there are 96 more in the booklet.
As an aside, I do have to laugh at something I saw after taking a seat and taking a first glance at this booklet. As I looked up at the curated selection of children’s books that line the shelves in the periphery of the central play area, I found myself at eye level with a prominently placed book called ‘In My Mosque’ by M.O. Yuksel; a picture book aimed at children aged 4-8. This book is actually quite charmingly illustrated and paints a beautiful picture of life in a mosque – a mysterious, welcoming, loving environment where a sophisticated and ennobling religion is practiced. I’m sure the Catholic version was already on loan.
Now, back to the propaganda. I’m a realist, I know that the literary world is overwhelmingly left-wing and socially progressive, and that our library service is no exception.
May I just, as a parent of three children aged between 0 and 5, make an appeal? Can we please agree upon some shared spaces where we put a pause on indoctrination? Please?! I don’t want to discuss sex with my five-year-old. My two-year-old fully believes she’s serving me a delicious milkshake when she hands me a cup from her tea set… stop trying to tell her that gender is a spectrum!
It doesn’t take much imagination to consider what the reflexive response would be if this were raised as an issue of concern to left-wing politicians or their praetorian guards in media and academia – likely, they’d make the claim that this is an attempt to import American culture war issues into Irish politics. They’d make the argument that these are frivolous issues that the Irish people aren’t concerned about. That’s an insulting, cheap, and dismissive response, but I would counter that this issue is anything but trivial; after all, if young children can begin to be inculcated with the values of progressivism before they can even walk… these kinds of efforts have the potential to set the rules for what will even be open to discussion in the future.
For the record, I voted for Gay Marriage in 2015. While I found many of the prominent faces of the yes campaign to be aggravating, dishonest, far-left ideologues – my yes vote was ultimately rooted in one very simple idea: I wanted gay people to be left alone and I’d mind my own business. What I didn’t vote for was for a bunch of deconstructionist, leftist activists trying to indoctrinate toddlers to be left wing or trying to talk to tweens about anal sex.
In the same spirit in which I voted for gay marriage, I’d appeal to these activists to similarly leave me alone. To channel the words of Ricky Bobby: with all due respect, and I mean with all due respect, stay the fuck away from my children.