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Parents angered by “Drag Queen Story Hour” are even more outraged as photos from an event that took place last October at Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon have emerged revealing young children lying on top of the adult male drag queen.
The Drag Queen Story Hour is a national program wherein drag queens are invited to read stories to children in public libraries, schools, and bookstores. These events are hosted in cities across the country, as well as in Germany, and have already been the subject of significant controversy, but the emergence of the Portland photos has quickly exacerbated the controversy.
The photos feature drag queen Anthony Hudson, known as “Carla Rossi,” sprawled out on the floor as young children buried their faces and touched his body. Life Site News notes that the same album featured toddlers and young boys dressed in feather boas. It’s worth noting that Multnomah County Library markets the series for children ages two to six.
The Daily Wire reports the photos have since been deleted, but not before Life Site News archived them and Facebook users posted and shared them to voice their opposition.
“Even as a day camp counselor 15 years ago,” one user posted, “we were pretty carefully trained about not giving kids piggyback rides or letting them sit on our laps. And if they asked for hugs, we took the side hug approach.”
“Boundaries provide safety,” the post continued. “They’re a form of love #DrageIsntForKids.”
The photos reignited criticisms over the safety of the Drag Queen Story Hour.
“The goal is to normalize abnormal, sexually deviant homosexual behavior by enticing children to first: question their sexuality,” said pro-family activist Georgia Kijesky. “The more children see men dressing up as women, the more normal it will become.”
In a statement to The Blaze, Multnomah County Library’s marketing and online engagement director Jeremy Graybill said the library “will reflect on the feedback that members of the community have offered” regarding the photos.
Sadly, Multnomah County Library does not seem to have any intention of discontinuing the story hour. Graybill continues to defend it as an opportunity to “explore ideas of difference, diversity and inclusion through stories, music and costume.”
“The library serves a diverse population with a broad range of interests, preferences and needs,” Graybill explained. “We strive to reflect our communities’ needs in selecting programs, books and other materials.”
Graybill contends that presenters invited to story hour are required to adhere to library behavior policies and rules of conduct.
But as reported by Breitbart News, the safety of these events was called into question after pro-family organization Houston Mass Resistance learned one of the drag queens who read at Montrose Public Library in Houston was a convicted sex offender. Drag queen Alberto Garza, who uses the name Tatiana Mala-Niña, was convicted in 2008 for sexually assaulting an eight-year-old boy. Evidently, the Houston library did not perform a background check on Garza or any of the other drag queens invited to read at the Montrose Public Library.
Parents have voiced their opposition to these events to no avail. A Drag Queen Story Hour at Grauwyler Park Branch Library in Dallas prompted more than 700 calls, 250 e-mails, and an “uncounted number of complaints on social media” said Dallas library system director Jo Guidice. Her response? Parents who disapprove of the event can take their children to another reading program within the library system, Dallas Voice reports.
Despite the community backlash against the Drag Queen Story Hour, the American Library Association continues to advocate its inclusion. Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit pro-family policy organization, notes that the most recent national conference of the ALA presented attendees with strategies for arranging Drag Queen Story Hours and for bringing LGBT agenda materials into public libraries without parental notification.
Workshops at the June conference included “Reading the Rainbow: Teaching Kids about Pride and LGBTQ+ History,” “Are You Going to Tell My Parents?: The Minor’s Right to Privacy in the Library,” and “A Child’s Room to Choose: Encouraging Gender Identity and Expression in School and Public Libraries.”
The activists behind the story hour are brazen about the purpose of their efforts. Dylan Pontiff, a drag queen who organized a story hour for Louisiana preschoolers, told the Lafayette City-Parish Council the event is intended to “groom” the next generation.
Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver contends there is no place for this sort of agenda in taxpayer funded facilities.
“Taxpayer-funded public libraries have no business promoting sexual perversion, gender confusion and pornography to children,” said Staver. “Parents do not want their children exposed to this kind of gutter trash. The American Library Association is now actively grooming innocent children for sexual abuse and causing irreversible harm to them.”
Photos from Life Site News
