The gist: Supporters held two private drag queen readings at a public library branch Sunday to muted protest and little else. Threats of violence and heavy protesting didn’t materialize.
The scene was relatively uneventful. A few dozen families showed up for the readings, held in two sessions at the South Regional Branch of the Lafayette Public Library. Kids got their faces painted, held balloons, did the hokey pokey and listened to three drag queens read stories about tolerance. Outside, Catholic protestors prayed the rosary and sang hymns over bagpipes, holding signs with slogans like “Drag Queens = Childhood’s End.”
“If we allow the corruption of children to happen, then we are corrupted as well,” Thomas Drake, a protest organizer, told KLFY.
All bark and no bite is how Story Time organizer Aimee Robinson described the threats of violence that harried the event, most of which were on social media threads posted by local news outlets and Facebook page Lafayette Citizens Against Taxes. The library paid for several LPD officers to provide security. The three drag queens were escorted to and from their cars by the officers.
“They went above and beyond,” Robinson says of the officers assigned, describing them as kind, courteous and understanding. “I couldn’t be happier. My hat’s off to them.”
Supporters are calling it a victory. Sunday’s readings were not directly related to last fall’s library-sponsored event, organized in collaboration with an LBGTQ+ fraternity at UL Lafayette, that ignited controversy and drew a failed and spurious federal law suit. Robinson says it nevertheless took a lot to pull the readings off, which were originally scheduled in December.
“We had to get the ACLU involved,” she says. After the original library-sponsored event was canceled (crowd control/safety being the purported reason), Robinson and fellow supporters booked a room for a private, Christmas-themed reading. That effort was blocked at the last minute when attorneys representing the library and Lafayette Consolidated Government produced a room reservation form that effectively banned any drag queen-related events until the federal suit was complete. (The suit was dismissed last week.) The ACLU intervened and the library and city officials agreed to strike the reservation form, a clear First Amendment violation, paving the way for Sunday’s readings.
What to watch for: More readings and if the library ever officially hosts Drag Queen Story Time. Robinson says she intends to hold more private readings, potentially in Breaux Bridge. Many opponents say their issue wasn’t with DQST itself, but that the library sponsored and promoted the event last fall. The library had attempted to move that event from its Downtown branch to the South Louisiana Community College, where it was ultimately postponed amid security concerns. In a press release at the time, library officials committed to hosting DQST with the fraternity in the future.