It had been a very long time since Bookmarks, a nonprofit literary arts group, was in a position to maintain its regular programming in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. However because the employees started to really feel extra snug holding occasions throughout the coronavirus pandemic, they deliberate a Drag Queen Story Hour for final weekend. It was nothing significantly new, they usually had hosted one earlier than the pandemic, too.
However what was imagined to be a approach for kids to be taught and have some enjoyable become a chance for conservative protesters to lob false, hurtful and harmful accusations.
A handful of protesters got here out to Bookmarks, and whereas they have been met with a a lot bigger counter-protest, the nonprofit group additionally acquired cellphone calls and emails from offended conservatives.
“It’s simply stunning to us the extent of hatred we acquired,” Jamie Rogers Southern, the manager director of Bookmarks, informed HuffPost. “It was an emotional week for us.”
Southern stated a lot of the callers have been badly confused about drag reveals. “Plenty of it's sadly misguided and ill-informed statements about how drag queens have been pornography or a strip present,” she stated. The protesters have been absolutely satisfied that this was a publicly funded occasion, she stated, and believed that children would “grow to be” transgender simply from taking a look at a drag queen. (No tax dollars have been used.)
Bookmarks just isn't alone. Earlier this month, a drag queen story time in California was interrupted by the Proud Boys, an extremist hate group. Members of the group stormed the occasion and yelled homophobic and transphobic slurs. And Final weekend, members of the Proud Boys protested a drag queen story time at a library in Nevada. Dad and mom and youngsters bumped into the constructing after a person allegedly pulled out a gun.
The sudden backlash to beforehand uncontroversial occasions didn’t come out of nowhere. In the previous few months, the conservative motion has doubled down on its assaults on queer folks. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) revoked Disney World’s particular tax standing after the company launched an announcement in opposition to the state’s “Don’t Say Homosexual” invoice, which is now regulation and restricts Florida academics from speaking about sexual orientation and gender within the classroom.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered the state’s baby protecting companies to research the dad and mom of transgender kids, claiming that getting their kids’s gender-affirming care is tantamount to abuse.
Republican leaders and activists are cloaking their homophobia and transphobia in concern for kids. However behind each “Received’t any person consider the youngsters?” wail is the true motivation: the need to regulate and implement strict gender roles.
And household drag reveals are the brand new catnip for this ultra-regressive motion.
“Republican leaders and activists are cloaking their homophobia and transphobia in concern for kids. However behind each “Received’t any person consider the youngsters?” wail is the true motivation: the need to regulate and implement strict gender roles.”
The protest in Winston-Salem got here simply weeks after a video of an analogous confrontation in Dallas went viral.
Within the video, drag queens may very well be seen main a bunch of youngsters down a makeshift runway, doing age-appropriate dances and poses whereas dad and mom seemed on and cheered.
“Take your kids to CHURCH, not drag bars,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) tweeted with no trace of acknowledgment of the kid sexual abuse scandals at varied church buildings.
After the video went viral, DeSantis, who's well-versed in attacking the LGBTQ neighborhood, stated that he could be open to having baby protecting companies in his state examine dad and mom who take their kids to tug reveals.
“It was once children could be off-limits. Was once everyone agreed with that,” DeSantis stated. “Now it simply looks as if there’s a concerted effort to be exposing children an increasing number of to issues that aren't age-appropriate.”
Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R) tweeted that he would “be proposing Laws to cost w/ a Felony & terminate the parental rights of any grownup who brings a baby to those perverted intercourse reveals aimed toward FL children.”
Elsewhere in Texas, state Rep. Bryan Slaton (R) tweeted that he would quickly introduce a invoice that may ban drag reveals within the presence of kids.
“The occasions of this previous weekend have been horrifying and present a disturbing development wherein perverted adults are obsessive about sexualizing kids,” he wrote in a press launch. “As a father of two younger kids, I do know I'd by no means take my kids to a drag present.”
It’s unclear how a invoice like this is able to work, or what it could entail. Would kids be banned from watching “Mrs. Doubtfire”? The 1993 basic stars Robin Williams as a divorced dad who clothes in drag and poses as a housekeeper to stay near his kids. Or what in regards to the Madea movies, which famously star Tyler Perry because the matriarch of a giant Black household?
As a result of drag queens are a big a part of the LGBTQ neighborhood, they’re robotically part of the conservative tradition warfare on anybody who isn’t straight, white and cisgender. And, as Republicans in energy have made clear, these are the one kind of people who find themselves acceptable of their imaginative and prescient for America.
In the identical approach assaults on crucial race principle have been posited as efforts to maintain children protected from discrimination, bloviating about storytime with drag queens as perverted is solely a canopy for the true finish aim.
Conservatives conflate drag queens studying books to kids with the sexualization of kids as a result of hypocrisy has no bounds. Elected officers have didn't act on college shootings, baby starvation and numerous different points dealing with kids in the present day.
As a substitute, they’re hyper-focused on the fake ethical panic of drag queen storytime.
“Conservatives conflate drag queens studying books to kids with the sexualization of kids as a result of hypocrisy has no bounds. Elected officers have didn't act on college shootings, baby starvation and numerous different points dealing with kids in the present day.”
However librarians and different organizations aren’t sitting again and watching. Alison Macrina, the director of the Library Freedom Venture, held an off-the-cuff session about assaults on libraries on the American Library Affiliation’s annual convention over the weekend.
There, attendees mentioned preventative measures, actions to be taken the second a library is focused, and what the neighborhood can do within the aftermath.
“There's a line between horrifying folks and readiness,” Macrina informed HuffPost. “We mentioned find out how to get dad and mom organized round this, de-escalation coaching, and disaster intervention.” The hope is that library employees might be ready to deal with such conditions — with out involving the police, who aren’t all the time useful in terms of incidents like these.
Because the Proud Boys and different related teams proceed their assaults with the implicit help of elected officers, Macrina is urging folks to become involved with their libraries and the broader neighborhood. “Get organized together with your neighbors who consider in homosexual rights, trans rights and drag queen story time,” she stated. “We actually, really want your help.”
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