It’s a point of pride that I’ve been able to maintain friendships with people from across the political divide in this highly tribalized era. After all, people are more than the sum total of their opinions. As a result, my social media feeds feature takes of varying ideological hues. I am enriched by the viewpoint diversity of my friends, who include Catholic intellectuals, progressive social justice warriors, conservative culture warriors, and mainstream liberals.

This column is directed toward the latter group, as they alone possess the power to pump the brakes on a disturbing and snowballing cultural trend: the normalization of child sexualization. While I am convinced that the majority of mainstream liberals are well intentioned in their promotion of the sexual revolution , the normalization of associating children with certain aspects of adult sexuality should be a line left uncrossed.

To be sure, mainstream liberals have a vested interest in remaining mute on this issue. There is nothing personally or professionally riskier than questioning the prevailing progressive orthodoxy on sexual mores. Also, speaking out on this issue has the potential to benefit the political opposition, particularly former President Donald Trump, who, at this moment, appears to be a lock for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. I personally understand the reluctance to do anything that could boost his political fortunes — I get it; I do. Nevertheless, I urge my mainstream liberal friends to resist the hypersexualization of children as a moral imperative that rises above politics.

At this point, I know what my mainstream liberal friends would say: that I’m being swept up in a moral panic and that this has all been concocted by bigots and “phobes” to restrict the rights of oppressed groups. But let’s survey a few recent news items to see if that theory holds.

Over the weekend, movie critic Wesley Morris wrote a review of Disney’s The Little Mermaid live-action remake that caused a large swath of the internet to gag in unison.

“The new, live-action ‘The Little Mermaid’ is everything nobody should want in a movie: dutiful and defensive, yet desperate for approval.” Morris wrote. “It reeks of obligation and noble intentions. Joy, fun, mystery, risk, flavor, kink — they’re missing.”

Yes, you read that last bit correctly, my mainstream liberal friends. But go ahead and read it again just to make sure. A New York Times review of a movie whose target audience is kindergarten-age girls thinks it fell short because it lanked kink.

Some readers were quick to run interference for the New York Times on Twitter by claiming the word “kink” was being misinterpreted. But it wasn’t misinterpreted — it's obvious what’s being said here in the context of the sentence. If you’re asking yourself why the New York Times would ever print such a revolting thought in its hallowed pages, then you’re at least at the beginning phase of acknowledging that something has gone terribly wrong in mainstream culture. We don't need to agree on everything to agree on that.

But alarm bells should have been already ringing for a while. This past November, fashion giant Balenciaga, in coordination with Adidas, released a BDSM ad that featured toddlers holding teddy bears in fishnet tops, leather straps, and studded collars. Just in case anyone is tempted to brush this off as a careless mistake, the photographs, which also saw toddlers passed out on a couch in front of half-empty wine glasses, featured a peculiar Easter egg: documents that outlined the Supreme Court decision that upheld the ban on child pornography.

Again, if you’re asking yourself how on earth this happened in the first place, you are one step closer to acknowledging the problem.

And finally, there’s the incredibly strange modern trend of bringing children to highly sexualized drag shows and even inviting those shows into schools to perform for children. To my mind, if you like drag shows and think it’s a performance art, then a salute. Adults should be able to take the money of other adults for risque song and dance if that’s how they want to spend their time.

But in recent years, it’s become more and more common to see prepubescent children in the audience at these shows. For those who have a hard time believing this is true, I’d challenge them to spend 30 seconds googling the matter. There’s more evidence for this growing trend than there was blood in O.J.’s Ford Bronco.

But there’s one incident that stands out above the rest from last June in Dallas. At a drag show in a dimly lit bar, pictures were taken of children holding out dollar bills to a half-naked adult who strutted underneath a large neon sign that read, “ It’s not gonna lick itself .”

To my friends on the mainstream Left: Can we at least agree that something has gone awry? It’s important to remember that this is an entirely different issue than protecting or advancing the rights of a group you regard as oppressed or marginalized. This is about very small children and whips, straps, and various other instruments of "kink."

In the words of your beloved former President Barack Obama, I beg you to acknowledge publicly that " that’s not who we are ."

Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner and the founder of Crush the College Essay. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, the National Catholic Register, and the American Spectator.