Rainbow Festival or Raunch Fest? East LA High School Turns Pride Into a Strip Club Matinee

East Los Angeles parents just got a front-row seat to the latest venture in California’s public-school experiment: turning taxpayer-funded high school campuses into after-hours drag clubs and twerking tutorials — all in the name of “inclusion.” The so-called Festival del Arcoiris, or Rainbow Festival, at Humanitas Academy of Art and Technology (part of Esteban E. Torres High School) was billed as the first annual Youth Pride Festival. What it delivered, according to horrified moms and dads, was a midday spectacle of lewd dancing, drag performances, and “School of Sexuality” consent forms that would make even the seediest Hollywood boulevard blush.

Last week, while kids were supposed to be learning algebra and history, the school, in partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District, rolled out resource booths, student art, poetry, and, even full-throated drag shows complete with a twerking dancer gyrating on stage. Videos of the performance quickly made the rounds among parents who never received notice that the event was happening, much less permission slips. One mother captured the parental consensus perfectly: “These kids have to get permission slips to watch a PG-13 movie. How does this fit in?”

It doesn’t. And that’s the point.

The rainbow-flag crowd never wants to admit that drag is adult entertainment. For decades it has lived in gay bars and nightclubs where bouncers card everyone at the door because patrons must be at least 18. The wigs, the heels, the lip-syncing, the exaggerated sexuality, the filthy jokes and language — none of it was ever meant for children. Yet here we are in 2026, with LAUSD treating minors as the audience for the very same acts that would get you bounced from any 21-and-over venue in the city.

The event’s main sponsor was Queer Mercado, a community pop-up run by one of the school’s own counselors. Allowing a staffer to push their business and their agenda on unwitting students is inappropriate, unprofessional, and a severe conflict of interest. Nothing says “neutral education” like letting a staffer turn the quad into a pride marketplace during school hours. Parents were also asked to sign consent forms so their kids could be filmed for an upcoming documentary called the “School of Sexuality”. The sheer audacity is almost impressive: first they expose the students to explicit content without parental consent, then they ask for written proof that the parents signed off on the filming of it.

This isn’t education. It’s indoctrination with a side of simulated sex acts. For years Californians have watched Sacramento and LAUSD shove gender ideology into classrooms under the banner of “belonging, empathy, and social awareness.” They lecture parents about keeping politics out of schools while hosting events that would get any private employer sued for sexual harassment or creating a hostile work environment. They demand “safe spaces” for everyone except the moms and dads who pay the taxes and raise the kids. And when parents dare to push back, as they are doing right now in East Los Angeles, the response is the usual corporate-LAUSD shrug: crickets from the principal’s office, and the counselor behind Queer Mercado suddenly unavailable for comment.

Parents aren’t asking for much. They’re not demanding the end of diversity conversations. They simply want to be told when their children are being exposed to adult-themed performances during the school day. They want the same basic courtesy they get when the district plans a movie screening or a sex-ed class. Instead, they got videos of twerking on school grounds and a consent form for a “School of Sexuality” documentary.

This is what happens when ideology replaces common sense. The adults in charge have convinced themselves that protecting children from sexual content is somehow bigoted, while exposing them to it is progressive. The parents of Humanitas Academy just proved otherwise. They saw the Rainbow Festival for what it was: a raunch fest masquerading as enlightenment. And they’re not going to stay quiet about it.

The message from East Los Angeles is loud and clear: our kids are not your drag props. They are not your twerking test subjects. They are students trying to get into college or the workforce, and they deserve an education, not an explicit matinee. If LAUSD and the rainbow-industrial complex want to keep pushing this agenda on children and minors, more and more Californians, both gay and straight alike, will push back even harder.