Proper-wing protests of Drag Story Hour occasions for kids ramped up in 2022 — typically based mostly on false claims that these occasions sexualize kids — and a lot of conservative state lawmakers have sought to ban these packages in latest weeks and restrict the place drag artists can carry out .
Nonprofit group Drag Story Hour launched in San Francisco, created by writer Michelle Tea to prepare occasions for drag performers to learn tales to kids, amongst different literary and inventive programming specializing in variety and inclusivity.
Drag Story Hour’s New York Metropolis chapter integrated as a non-profit and started receiving funds from the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library and two metropolis council members to fund ebook purchases, drag performer compensation and coaching packages that train drag artists to talk with kids successfully about gender identification and drag.
Far-right commentator and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones grew to become among the many first outstanding conservative media figures to blast Drag Story Hour, pushing a false declare the drag artists are utilizing story occasions to “[have] their means” with kids in an InfoWars phase that with concluded him throwing his chair in anger.
Drag Story Hour confronted a lawsuit filed by a gaggle of Houston critics who argued that the Houston Public Library was partnering with “non-secular entities” by internet hosting drag queens (the lawsuit was later dismissed).
Larry Householder, the Republican Speaker of the Home of Representatives, despatched a letter to the Ohio Library Council state libraries “shouldn’t be a useful resource for teenage boys to discover ways to costume in drag.”
Practically 100,000 individuals signed a petition to the American Library Affiliation protesting drag story hours, however the ALA maintained it “strongly opposes any effort to restrict entry to data, concepts and packages that patrons want to discover.”
Various drag story hours and family-friendly drag occasions confronted threats and protests throughout Pleasure Month, forcing organizers to cancel occasions in North Carolina, California and on a US Air Power base in Germany.
Proud Boys members — together with one carrying a shirt that learn “kill your native pedophile” — disrupted a drag story hour occasion, shouting “homophobic and transphobic slurs on the occasion’s organizers, within the presence of youngsters.”
Mayor Eric Adams and different New York Metropolis politicians voiced help for drag story hours, which Adams mentioned are “advancing a love of variety, private expression, and literacy that’s core to what our metropolis embraces.”
At Anti-Defamation League report discovered baseless accusations of LGBTQ individuals “grooming” kids grew rampant in spring 2022, notably on social media — accounts like “Libs of TikTok” (a now-suspended TikTok account that maintains a well-liked Twitter presence) focused and doxxed drag performers and pushed the conspiracy that these occasions sexualize kids.
Home Republicans launched the “Cease the Sexualization of Youngsters Act,” aiming to stop federal funds be used for occasions together with drag reveals and story hours.
A drag storytime occasion in Oregon attracted a whole lot of protestersa few of whom have been armed with weapons and threw smoke grenades.
Tucker Carlson claimed on Fox Information drag story hours are held to “indoctrinate and sexualize kids.”
Texas legislators launched two payments that might classify venues that host drag occasions as “sexually oriented companies,” making it a misdemeanor to confess minors.
protesters vandalized the house and workplace of Erik Bottcher, a homosexual member of the New York Metropolis Council who has voiced help for Drag Story Hour, with homophobic graffiti.
A whole lot of protesters gathered at a Drag Story Hour occasion in New York Metropolis, although they have been far outnumbered by counterprotesters supporting the occasion.
A collection of payments launched within the Arizona legislature would criminalize drag reveals in public locations the place a minor may very well be current and withhold state funds from entities, like libraries, that host drag occasions.
A invoice launched within the Oklahoma legislature would effective drag performers as much as $20,000 and jail them for as much as 2 years for performing in entrance of minors, together with talking at Drag Story Hours.
The North Dakota State Home handed a invoice, pending Senate approval, that might ban drag performers from showing in entrance of minors or on public property.
A Kansas Republican state senator launched a invoice that might classify drag occasions as exposing minors to “obscenity” — and the Tennessee legislature superior a invoice that might classify drag reveals as “grownup cabaret,” banning them from public property and the potential presence of minors.
Drag story hours have been hailed by supporters as a strategy to encourage kids to like studying and to have a good time variety and inclusivity. Since launching in San Francisco, Drag Story Hour has opened chapters throughout the nation and world, and others organizations have provided their very own drag storytime occasions. Nina West — who appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race and has since hosted story hours at libraries — instructed decider not all drag is sexual in nature, regardless of conservative opponents protesting story hours on the false grounds that they expose minors to sexual content material. “For them, it is like if a princess got here in, or a clown. We talked about simply, like, how they prefer to put on completely different outfits or costumes on Halloween, drag is one other strategy to categorical your self,” West mentioned.
141. That is what number of protests in opposition to drag occasions GLAAD — the Homosexual & Lesbian Alliance In opposition to Defamation — recorded in 2022. GLAAD famous the protests and rhetoric grew to become more and more violent because the yr progressed, together with incidents in 47 states, with Texas alone having 20 protests.
Fox Information spent extra airtime negatively masking transgender individuals and drag queens than the second January 6 committee listening to on June 13, a Media Issues for America evaluation discovered.
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