GOP Lawmaker Secured $1 Million For Museum Targeting Kids With Trans Propaganda

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A South Carolina “Republican” lawmaker pushed through an earmark for a Lowcountry children’s museum that prominently features pro-trans propaganda… targeting children.

Even worse? Leaders in the GOP “supermajority” lifted nary a finger to stop this earmark – or a host of other unscrutinized pork barrel spending that found its way into the uniparty’s bloated state budget this year.

Only the S.C. Freedom Caucus stood against the pork buffet.. and its objections were overrun.

As first reported by Corey Allen of The Overton Report, the Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry – which received $1 million in South Carolina’s fiscal year 2024-2025 budget – is promoting a book entitled ‘When Aidan Became A Brother‘ by author Kyle Lukoff and illustrator Kaylani Juanita.

Described by its promotors as a “sweet and groundbreaking picture book,” the volume “celebrates the changes in a transgender boy’s life, from his initial coming-out to becoming a big brother.”

“Transgender boy,” of course, refers to a biological female … which for those of you unhip to chromosomal reality is the opposite of a biological male (the Olympics notwithstanding, it would appear).

Here’s a picture of the book on display at the museum …

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“As Aidan got bigger, he hated the sound of his name,” the book noted. “He felt like his room belonged to someone else. And he always ripped or stained his clothes accidentally-on-purpose.”

“Everyone thought he was just a different type of girl,” it continued. “But Aidan didn’t feel like any kind of girl. He was really another kind of boy.”

Wait… “really?”

Really?

“It was hard to tell his parents what he knew about himself,” the book continued. “But it was even harder not to.”

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I’ll say this again because it’s an important point in this conversation: I have consistently argued that parents are – and should remain – free to raise their children as they see fit (for the most part). And while books like this targeting (grooming) children are insidiously vile, manipulative and dangerous in my view, no one is trying to “ban” them.

We are simply asking government to refrain from making us pay for them (or putting them under our children’s noses without our consent).

“Parents can still purchase whatever books they wish for their children – and share whatever material they feel is appropriate within the confines of their own homes, generally speaking,” I noted earlier this year. “(But) what they cannot do – what they must never be allowed to do – is force taxpayers to subsidize pornographic content for kids, or expose people’s children to such content without parental consent.”

Sadly, this is exactly what is happening at government-run schools – and at public libraries and museums – all across the Palmetto State. And this is exactly what is happening right now at the Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry as a result of the appropriation it received in the latest “Republican” budget.

How did a funding request like this slip through the cracks?

Back in May, I slammed uniparty lawmakers for these secretive earmarks – referring to them collectively as an “orgy of government excess.”

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“Why do lawmakers want to keep these expenditures under wraps?” I wrote. “Easy: Because many – if not most – of these appropriations are impossible to defend as statewide expenditures.”

So … which “Republican” tucked this particular $1 million earmark into the state budget? Gil Gatch, a second-term “Republican” from Summerville, S.C.

In fact, from the document denoting these earmarks (.pdf) here’s a screen cap of the receipt…

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If Gatch’s name sounds familiar to some in our audience, it should. He’s among the powerful attorneys in the legislature who have fiercely defended the Palmetto State’s notoriously corrupt method of appointing judges – in which influential lawyer-legislators routinely rig judicial elections to put people like former S.C. circuit court judge Bentley Price on the bench.

What happens once puppets like Price are in place? Travesties of justice like this… which make a mockery of judicial integrity and independence and materially erode public safety.

Anyway, Gatch’s support of this earmark is just another example of his utter indifference as it relates to the best interests of our children and our communities.

Again, far be it from me as a libertarian to say misguided parents looking to purchase (or borrow) books like the one stocked at the Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry shouldn’t be allowed to do so. They shouldn’t if they genuinely care about their kids, but I’m not saying that. I am not – and have never been – a book banner. Nor will I ever be.

I am simply saying this: Do not make taxpayers subsidize your propaganda – and do not keep trying to put your propaganda under the noses of children whose parents do not consent to it.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Will Folks is the owner and founding editor of FITSNews. Prior to founding his own news outlet, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina, bass guitarist in an alternative rock band and bouncer at a Columbia, S.C. dive bar. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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