Candace Owens absurdly says parents who are cool with drag queens are ‘underqualified to have children’

Critics slammed the conservative influencer on Twitter for her problematic, anti-LGBT+ remarks

Candace Owens of The Daily Wire has come under fire after she claimed that parents that take their kids to drag queen story hour are “underqualified” to have children.

“Of course, I have been covering the wonderful month of Pride, for which I feel no pride for at all. I think it should be called shame month. It’s absolute debauchery,” Ms Owens said on her programme on the conservative outlet.

“I spoke about this last week and when you believe when you start to see that your government is sponsoring that, when they’re putting real dollars behind things like drag queen story hour in New York City, you should realize that something nefarious is going on because the government does not care about your children. No, the government does not love your children,” she added.

“The government does not want your children to be accepted. The government wants your children to be enslaved to government for the rest of their life,” Ms Owens said.

“And right now, as we’re seeing, there is a marriage between government and big pharma. It is my belief that that is the push behind this effort to tell children that they can pick their gender and to confuse them,” she added.

“And you’re seeing right now that adults are getting behind this narrative so they can have a woke T-shirt on and say I love my children. I allowed my child to pick their gender and pick their species,” she said. “And they feel proud of themselves because they can go and they can say this on Facebook that they are wonderful, accepting, and loving adults. When, in reality, they are underqualified to have children.”

“They should have their children taken away from them because it’s child abuse,” she said.

Social media users roasted Ms Owens for her comments.

“Would she say the same about parents who teach their children that being gay is a sin that needs to be suppressed. That’s worse,” wrote one Twitter user.

“No, because she can’t make money by saying that,” another Twitter user responded.

“Personally I think the far right threatening to seize your children and send them to re-education camps is bad and probably warrants a response from liberals and the left,” another account holder said. “Especially considering that what Owens is arguing for is not a significant departure from existing state policy in places like Texas, where parents of trans kids are facing state investigation for child abuse.”

“Remember five minutes ago when Republicans won Virginia squalling about PARENTAL CHOICE in matters of their children’s reading material,” The American Prospect’s Ryan Cooper added, referring to Governor Glenn Younkin’s 2021 victory against former Governor Terry McAuliffe.

“With final victory over the rule of law and democracy in sight, conservatives are already planning their revenge against the liberals who stood in their way,” editor Michael Tae Sweeney wrote. “Stealing children was one of the major ways Franco’s regime in Spain punished the opposition once in power.”

“Amazing how the right wing is all about ‘parent’s rights’ right up until those parents want to tell their children that gay people exist,” wrote LGBT+ Program Director at Media Matters for America Ari Drennen.

Brynn Tannehill said that it’s a “very short jump from ‘parents who allow their children to be around LGBT people should have them taken away,’ to ‘LGBT people should have their children taken away.’ Which they will do, after Lawrence v Texas falls in 4-5 years,” referring to the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that a Texas law criminalizing consensual sex between two people of the same sex was unconstitutional.

Rising co-host Robby Soave tweeted that “Candace should evaluate the tension between these two beliefs: 1) the government is in league with leftists to destroy families, 2) the government should be further empowered to take children away from their families”.