A Virginia official says drag queens hurt kids. She’s missing the real threat.

On American grammar school campuses, 75 people have been killed or injured by gunfire so far this year.

Many of those victims were children. One of the shooters — in an elementary school in Virginia — was 6 years old.

So Virginia’s lieutenant governor, a Marine veteran who posed with a gun in her campaign ads, went on national television over the weekend to give a fiery testimony about … drag queens?

“It’s happening,” Winsome Earle-Sears (R) told Bill Maher on his show Saturday night, insisting that drag queen lap dances for kiddies is a thing. “There are drag queens that are doing pole dances, there are drag queens that are in school.”

Yes, drag queen story hours — mostly organized in public libraries, bookstores or community centers — are a thing. And they’ve been around for a few years. Back in 2018 when they first started becoming popular, a library in Virginia Beach offered one and seats filled up so quickly the library had a waiting list.

Come on, people — get a grip. Drag has been mainstream for decades now.

Patrick Swayze, John Leguizamo, Wesley Snipes, Nathan Lane and Robin Williams and Tom Hanks all helped explain drag to you decades ago.

Gender as a performance has been winning box office sales and Oscars for a couple generations now. What happened?

Oh yeah. Politicians who have no answers for real issues like gun violence in schools, a troubled health-care system or inflation are targeting sparkly storytellers as a flash point for the culture war they need to stoke to remain in office.

Since the right fixated on these spectacular personas constructed of glitter, spandex and stilettos as the epicenter of America’s evil, drag queen story hours have been swarmed, protested, invaded — and one in downtown Silver Spring, Md., in February even turned combative when the Proud Boys showed up.

In state legislatures, at least 26 bills have been introduced in 14 states this year trying to erase drag events.

All this because a costumed performer reads a book about being different to a group of kids who simply love performers, glitz or — for some — the chance to know they are not alone.

“What kind are you?” asks a gaggle of blue bunnies and yellow birds, when they meet a green bird with bunny ears. It’s the board book “Neither” by Airlie Anderson, a favorite read at drag queen story hours. It’s a book that is also beloved by biracial children.

“I’m both!” the magnificent creature replies. The message in the book is an important one for all kids.

“It’s important that they see they aren’t alone, there isn’t anything wrong with them, and it’s safe for other kids to be friends with them!” Persephone Rose, a performer who read to kids at a public library in McLean, Va., said in a response to a negative tweet about the story hour two years ago. “If I had seen this kind of visibility as a kid my life would have been very different and much improved.”

In 2019, nearly a quarter of high school students identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual said they tried to kill themselves in the prior 12 months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s nearly four times the rate for straight students.

But I could find zero reports of a drag lap dance or pole dance in any Virginia school.

Maher, as Earle-Sears outlined the sins of story hour, was equally dumbstruck. “I’ve never seen it happen in a school,” he said, adding dryly: “First of all, so few schools have poles.”

But Earle-Sears — armed with whatever she read on her curated social media feed — pushed on.

“Bill, you’ve got to read more,” Earle-Sears told him. “Let me tell you, they take them to the libraries.”

I didn’t get a response when I asked Earle-Sears’s office for the examples she was freaking out about. So I assume all she’s got is her imagination and an event that became a LibsofTikTok hate incident last week, a Pride event at a North Carolina college.

“Happy Pride Fest, Forsyth Tech,” said the Instagram post announcing the second annual event on the campus of Forsyth Tech Community College in Winston-Salem last week. “We were so proud to host our second #PrideFest to celebrate our LGBTQ+ community and spread love and acceptance.”

At that event - filled with information booths and student advocates - a drag performer known as Erica Chanel did a shimmying dance hovering over the lap a seated female who was laughing the whole time. This was nothing like the lap dances at the strip clubs I visited as a cops reporter covering crime scenes. Trust me.

After the dance, the female stretched out her arms to the performer for a quick hug.

Yes, there were kids there, it was an event open to the public and some families came. But it was nothing like the tawdry image that Earle-Sears had painted.

You know what else happened at this college?

Last week, the entire campus went into lockdown when a student was shot, according to WXII-TV. It turns out he accidentally shot himself in the hand with a gun he had illegally brought to campus, according to police. Hundreds of students locked down in terror. Parents surrounded the school when they heard about the gunfire. The student was later arrested in the incident.

The folks terrified of drag queens didn’t say a word.