It’s hard to stay woke these days. The rules keep changing. And for the many conservatives like me who are supportive of gay rights, the activist left seems determined to make things as complicated and stressful as possible.

The latest eyebrow-raising story comes from Teen Vogue, in the form of a nine-year-old boy named Nemis Quinn Mélançon Golden they describe as “impressive and magical.”

You might be asking yourself, what could a 9-year-old boy do that a magazine geared towards teens would call “magical”?

Well, Golden is a drag queen who has gone by the name “Queen Lactatia” since he was seven:

When he was seven, this pint-size boy — who had a habit of wearing his sister’s tutus and princess costumes when he was two — officially transformed into a queen called Lactatia. Now he’s a miniature fixture on the Montreal drag scene. “I was always a drag queen, but I never knew it until my sister showed me RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Nemis explains. Drag, the subversive art of deconstructing gender through over-the-top aesthetics and performances, has become Nemis’s main source of empowerment and pride.

“All hail Queen Lactatia!” the short article declares triumphantly as it invites the reader to peruse a slideshow of Golden in various outfits.

Hang on just a minute here.

“Lactatia”? As in “lactating”? Why is a child being publicly paraded with a nickname related to breastfeeding?

Why is a child being publicly paraded like this at all?

Specifically, why is this child wearing makeup and costumes that are designed to be sexually attractive when worn by adults?

When a little six-year-old girl named JonBenét Ramsey was found murdered in the basement of her family home in 1996, a significant portion of the media attention and public debate centered around her participation in child beauty pageants.

Were the makeup, costumes, and song-and-dance routines too sexualized to be proper for a child? Did they make her attractive to a pedophile, and is that why she was killed?

Ramsey’s murder remains unsolved, so we may never know the truth, but her parents — even after they were cleared as suspects in her death — were vilified for “making her a target.”

Why was JonBenét, often pictured in a full face of makeup and colorful outfits with sequins and pink cowboy hats controversial, viewed as wearing too much makeup for an innocent child, as trying to look too “sexy”?

But this child, also in a pink cowboy hat and a full face of makeup, is “impressive and magical”?

This is beyond gender or sexual orientation or whatever hashtag the Liberal Twitterati have decided is the anti-bullying trend du jour.

There are many of us on the right who rolled our eyes when social conservatives warned that gay marriage would be a slippery slope, and soon liberals would be advocating for pedophilia and beastiality and mercy knows what else.

It would be really great if the activist left would stop working so hard to prove their critics right.

Equal marriage rights wasn’t enough; they want to drive out of business any baker who doesn’t want to celebrate with them.

Adults being free to explore the relationships their hearts desire isn’t enough; they encourage a child to adopt a nickname that evokes breastfeeding, wear adult makeup and clothes, and pose giving the camera a come-hither stare.

And that’s not even getting into the issue that the “drag scene” is generally one that occurs at adult nightclubs and bars, late at night. The Teen Vogue article talks about how Golden has become “a miniature fixture on the Montreal drag scene.”

Are his parents really taking him to nightclubs, to perform for adults?

I don’t know if Golden will grow up to be gay, straight, or bisexual. I just wish he were being allowed to grow up, period.

Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter: @rumpfshaker.