Drag Queen Story Time in Houston is over, for now.
The program, in which drag queens read stories to groups of children at the library, had been subjected to a lot of scrutiny and harassment from the far right during the past year, after City Council member Michael Kubosh publicly condemned the events.
In a piece for Houstonian, organizers Trent Lira and Devin Will detail the downslide from peaceful protests to serious safety concerns.
“[Our first protestors] were peaceful and civil. No one inside the Freed-Montrose Library knew there were protestors outside until a patron came in and told us. It continued like this through August and September [2018]. It disturbed us, but what could we say? They were standing outside and politely informing the public that there were drag queens in there reading to children it was their right. It was not a threat.”
Later, a group of Christian activists filed a lawsuit against the children’s program, alleging that the drag queens were attempting to indoctrinate children with the “religion of Secular Humanism.”
A Texas judge found the case to be without merit and threw it out, but one of the plaintiffs, Tex Christopher, continued to attend shows and make people uncomfortable.
And of course, there was the gun-carrying Trump supporter who entered the library to protest the event and was arrested (he had previously been banned for filming children in the library).
Lira and Will temporarily planned to move the event out of the library to provide a safer situation for everyone.
But then it was revealed that one of their earliest drag queens, who had volunteered prior to the event requiring background checks, had been charged with sexual assault of a minor in 2009.
“It was devastating. We had insisted and insisted that what we were doing was safe for children, and yet here was a performer who had been charged with sexual assault of a minor. We didn’t know about the conviction prior to last week, but it would have come up if a background check had been conducted. It was a systematic mistake.”
The organizers say that the library still supports the Story Hour program, but a program that was supposed to bring joy to children has become too controversial and even dangerous.
“We believe in what we’re doing, but we don’t believe in putting our friends, our families, or our children in danger,” they wrote.
“That is why we are choosing to step away, to protect the lives and the livelihoods of the people we love. We want to serve the LGBT+ community, and we will. We will just have to do it another way.”
