Behind the Chiffon Curtain: Drag Queen Story Hours and Child Endangerment

You are not signed in as a Premium user; you are viewing the free version of this program. Premium users have access to full-length programs with limited commercials and receive a 10% discount in the store! Sign up for only one day for the low cost of $1.99. Click the button below.

See All Plans

Drag queen story hours (DQSHs) have quickly become one of the most divisive controversies in the 21st century culture war. Recent research revealed that these events are part of a much larger, intentional effort by the American Library Association to promote LGBTQ activism. New evidence from their recent annual conference shows how deep this promotion runs and how libraries are protecting themselves instead of protecting children. Communities are demanding to know: What’s really behind the values DQSHs are said to promote? Do DQSHs actually provide children with positive role models or expose them to dangerous men?

The Exposure

In June, Personhood Alliance Education brought to light an intentional movement within the American Library Association (ALA) to bring DQSHs and other LGBTQ-promoting events into libraries across the country, even helping "secret librarian advocate operative[s]" sneak LGBTQ books and materials into current programs and use outside sponsors to host DQSHs in resistant communities. Over 43,000 people responded by signing our petition with LifeSiteNews. A similar petition partnership between CitizenGo and the Activist Mommy brought an additional 56,000 signatures. Both petitions were delivered to the ALA’s office in Washington, D.C., on July 11.

If you have not yet signed the petition to the ALA, which is now moving to Congress, click here to add your name.

Georgia Kijesky, leader of Personhood Maryland, was instrumental in bringing this issue to the forefront, as her local library in Lexington Park, Maryland is an active example of how larger forces are working to promote corrupted sexuality and gender to children. She also helped organize a well-attended prayer vigil on June 23 during the DQSH and Drag 101 events at the library, which were led by a drag queen whose name was purposefully withheld from the public by the event sponsor.

The response to the research, the petition, and the vigil is one that has become familiar to Christian communities across the country. It's a response shared by the ALA, LGBTQ advocacy groups, DQSH organizers and supporters and even some churches:

1. DQSHs reflect good values like inclusivity, acceptance and freedom of expression.
2. DQSHs are harmless and offer children positive role models.

Let's examine what's behind these claims.

The Values Beneath the Veneer

At the 2019 ALA annual conference and exhibition, held in Washington, DC in June, intellectual freedom and inclusivity were front and center. Supported by the structures within the ALA that were created to normalize and promote the LGBTQ lifestyle, these rhetorical concepts — core values, according to the ALA — were woven throughout the workshops and exhibition hall. These core values were also worn proudly by ALA executives and attendees, even ALA president Loida Garcia-Febo, as they celebrated World Pride Month and the 50th anniversary of The Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Uprising, as it's also known, is a key milestone in the gay rights movement — six days of violent demonstrations started by drag queen Marsha P. Johnson against police who had raided a gay club in New York City in 1969.

More than 100 ALA conference workshops boasted an equality, diversity and inclusivity theme — a reported one-third of the total workshop offerings. Sessions included:

• A workshop to help librarians prepare for DQSH backlash, titled "Controversial speaker planned for your library event? Things to consider"
• Guidance for how to couch DQSHs, LBGTQ programs, and pornography in 1st Amendment and core values rhetoric, called "Censorship Beyond Books"
• Insight from Michelle Tea, creator of the DQSH phenomenon, and Kristin Pekoll, a leader in the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom on Telling Stories, Expanding Boundaries: Drag Queen Storytimes in Libraries
• A social-justice-themed session titled "Subversive Activism: Creating Social Change Through Libraries, Children's Literature and Art

Other workshops included "A Child's Room to Choose: Encouraging Gender Identity and Expression in School and Public Libraries" and "Are You Going to Tell My Parents?: The Minor's Right to Privacy in the Library."

It is important to note here that, under the guise of right-to-privacy, First Amendment protections and anti-censorship, the ALA fought vigorously against requiring pornography-blocking software on library computers in the early 2000s. This software was mandated for public libraries and schools through the federal Children's Internet Protection Act. The ALA opposed porn filters all the way to the Supreme Court, but lost in United States v. American Library Association in 2003. Today, the ALA is bypassing this decision, giving children access to pornography and age-inappropriate events and materials offline, in the form of DQSHs, Drag 101 events, explicit sex education workshops' and pornographic book displays.

The Role Models Beneath the Makeup

The ALA's promotion of DQSHs legitimizes the idea that a man dressed as an exaggerated caricature of a woman promotes acceptance, inclusion, and children’s literacy. The DQSH website itself says that these events "capture the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and give kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models."

So is a drag queen a positive role model for children?

According to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD), "Drag queens are men, typically gay men, who dress like women for the purpose of entertainment." Drag queens perform for gay audiences in adult nightclubs and at other homosexual- and transgender-themed events and venues. They are performers who live other lives outside of their drag characters and may or may not be transgender, notes the National Center for Transgender Equality.

What about the "other life" of a drag queen, and does it matter in terms of having access to children?

This drag queen, Dylan Pontiff (aka Santana Pilar Andrews) says he can filter himself for different audiences — the gay men who pay money to see him in sexually charged drag attire and the children who sit in front of him as he reads children's books that introduce homosexuality and gender-fluid concepts. Yet, he makes a startling admission: "[The DQSH] is going to be the grooming of the next generation. We are trying to groom the next generation."

And what of the drag queen whose identity was purposefully withheld from the public prior to the June 23rd events at the Lexington Park Library in Maryland?

He's shown below in pink.

Read the rest at Personhood Alliance.

Have a news tip? Submit news to our tip line.

We rely on you to support our news reporting. Please donate today.