“I might be moving to Montana soon.” Not to become a dental floss tycoon, but to live in a state that looks at dudes dressed as women interacting with school children and responds appropriately – that is, “Hell no.”

Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a bill into law banning drag queen story hours in public libraries and schools. To be clear: Nobody’s saying you can’t dress like an explosion at clown college, and nobody’s saying you can’t scare the hell out of little kids. But you can’t do it on public property.

Gianforte signed the bill because he “believes it’s wildly inappropriate for little kids, especially preschoolers and kids in elementary school, to be exposed to sexualized content,” spokesperson Kaitlin Price said in a statement.

Indeed.

But! But! “Drag performers who opposed the legislation said they have separate drag performances for children compared to those intended for adults.”

So they don’t read smut to the kindergartners? That’s reassuring. And maybe they keep the twerking to a minimum (Besides, it ain’t easy reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” while shakin’ it.)

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Braxton Mitchell, said he sponsored the bill “because drag shows in recent years have been specifically aimed at children,” and spoke of online videos that show children at drag shows.

“In my humble opinion, there’s no such thing as a family-friendly drag show,” Mitchell said in April.

No there isn’t. The entire point of exposing kids to trans/drag/green-haired pronoun pests is to introduce them to sex and gender weirdness and thus normalize it, biology and morality be damned. Everybody knows this, but a lot of people won’t say it.

That makes Montana’s law the first to specifically ban drag reading events, said Sasha Buchert, an attorney with Lambda Legal, a national organization that seeks to protect the civil rights of the LGBTQ+ community and those diagnosed with HIV and AIDS.

“It’s just constitutionally suspect on all levels,” Buchert said Tuesday, arguing the bill limits free speech and seeks to chill an effort that helps transgender youth know they are not alone.

If there’s a “transgender youth” out there who thinks he’s alone in 2023, I congratulate his parents for keeping him away from all forms of mass media. On the other hand, if he doesn’t have access to mass media, he isn’t trans, since he doesn’t know that’s the surest way to get attention these days.

And for all I know the bill might be constitutionally suspect, but not anywhere near as suspect as giving weirdos access to school kids. The laws that the left screams about aren’t created in a vacuum. They’re responses to a disturbing trend, and normal people think they’re reasonable. As my colleague Bob Hoge wrote this morning, normals are telling Bud Light and Target they crossed a line.

That’s why drag reading events draw protests. “But events will continue despite the protests, which [drag queen Julie] Yard says helps prove that they are needed.”

They are needed alright. Just not by kids or parents or society at large. They’re needed by the drag queens themselves. There’s nothing like having a captive audience of preschoolers. (It’s funny: A lot of kids find clowns inherently scary. I wonder how many run screaming when “Alexa Flame” sits down and opens “Good Night Moon”?)

But they’ll keep pretending they’re doing it for those poor lonely “transgender kids.”

For us, it’s again just doubling down and making sure that we are sending a message out there to anyone, but especially kids who are vulnerable, that there is a place for them, there is a community for them, and that there are folks out there who are interested in making sure that they are accepted and feel safe.

Montana is taking steps to ensure the other 99 percent of kids feel safe.