<
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/pride-organizers-drag-protests-brand-pullouts-far-right-1234741010/>
"When Susan Steinberg, the chairman of the Mahwah Pride Coalition in Mahwah,
New Jersey, began organizing a Drag Queen Story Hour for Pride Month last year,
she anticipated it would be well-attended and relatively non-controversial.
Though Mahwah, which has a population of about 26,000, tends to skew
conservative, Steinberg says residents have largely been supportive of local
Pride events. “We live in a very nice town,” says Steinberg, a realtor. “People
are very friendly most of the time.”
Then someone asked Steinberg if she had seen a flier being circulated under
doorsteps and among local Facebook groups, accusing the drag queen hosting it
of being a “known pornographer” and claiming the event “normalized pedophilia
and abuse of children.” The backlash went national: the Mahwah Drag Queen Story
Hour was publicized on the far-right transphobic Twitter account Libs of
TikTok, and Steinberg says the mayor of Mahwah received more than 300 calls
protesting the event. She went to the police to see if she could add extra
security in light of all the threats, but she says they told her she would have
to pay extra. “We’re a small group,” she says. “[We] just don’t have the
resources.”
When the Drag Queen Story Hour was held on June 13, 2022, it attracted a small
phalanx of protesters associated with the white supremacist movement White
Lives Matter, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The protesters held
megaphones and shouted epithets, an event that garnered national news coverage.
“[They were] effectively terrorizing the children,” Steinberg says. “It was
terrifying.”
In the leadup to this year’s Pride Month, the experience has stayed fresh in
Steinberg’s mind, and the organization has decided they will not be holding
another Drag Queen Story Hour this year. “Those events are a chance for kids to
hear about inclusion and they’re wonderful opportunities for parents to bring
their kids to see someone who may be different,” Steinberg says. “[But] we’re
not in a position to deal with the directed hate.”
The fears of the Mahwah Pride Coalition are shared by LGBTQ activist groups
across the country. In the midst of an increasingly militant anti-trans and
drag movement on the right — including protests, legislation, and aggressive
and threatening social media campaigns — watchdog groups are closely monitoring
Pride events out of concerns for potential violence. As a result, many Pride
parade and drag performance organizers are recalibrating their event slates,
and in some cases, spending thousands of dollars outside of their budgets to
ramp up security. At the same time, controversy-shy corporate sponsors are
backing away or dropping out altogether — leaving local Pride organizers to
fend for themselves."
Via Whuffo and Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
