Retired police officer and military veteran Jim Thomas drove to downtown Helena, Montana, the state’s capital, to supply what he thought of a neighborhood service. On a Saturday in mid-July, he joined a vocal crowd outdoors a neighborhood LGBTQ-owned impartial bookstore and commenced scanning his environment.
Standing 6ft 4in and about 200lbs, with a camouflage baseball hat and scraggly eyebrows, Thomas arrived with a mission: be sure that Drag Story Hour, the family-friendly studying occasion the place glowing drag performers learn kids’s books to youngsters and households, went off with no hitch.
“I believe it’s incumbent upon us to face up and assist the place we will, if we will,” stated Thomas, an avid reader and patron of Montana Ebook Firm, the bookstore which hosted the occasion. “I don’t put on attire and I’m not homosexual. However you recognize what? … I’m right here supporting you guys.”
Within the days main as much as the annual Delight occasion, anti-LGBTQ outrage had flared up on social media, with commenters calling the occasion “inappropriate” and indicative of kid abuse. Many had promised to boycott the shop.
A number of the social media fervor reached the web site Gab, a platform in style amongst conservatives and the far proper, the place one self-identified member of the Oath Keepers militia pledged to “shut this demonic preying on kids down”. A neighborhood human rights group flagged the publish for the native police division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the bookstore homeowners and the organisers of the city’s Delight celebration.
Occasion planners have been involved in regards to the menace, however have been unwilling to be cowed by what Kevin Hamm, the president of Montana Delight, referred to as “infantile bigots”. The occasion would go ahead, organisers stated – however not with no name to motion.
In an Instagram publish shared with almost 4,500 followers, the bookstore requested supporters to point out up in solidarity. Homeowners Chelsia Rice and Charlie Crawford started sending Fb messages to mates and allies like Thomas, interesting for his or her time and presence on the retailer that Saturday. And at two separate occasions earlier within the week, one of many scheduled drag performers gave Delight-goers express marching orders.
“I stated, what we actually must do now's we'd like a colossal displaying of help,” stated Julie Yard, one of many members of the Mister Sisters drag trio from Nice Falls, who requested to be recognized by her stage identify to guard her identification. “And [I said that] regardless of what number of of them present up, I would like us to outnumber them 200 to 1. And simply the entire crowd erupted in cheers.”
The premise of Drag Queen Story Hour is straightforward: to have drag performers dressed as queens, mermaids, legendary goddesses and different larger-than-life characters internet hosting kids’s story hours, a lot to the delight of younger folks and their dad and mom. The occasions have proved so in style, they’ve unfold by way of city and rural communities like an explosion of glitter.
Drag Queen Story Hour was created in 2015 by queer author Michelle Tea and Radar, a Bay Space queer literary arts group. Since then, the unique idea has solidified right into a non-profit with greater than 50 chapters across the US and overseas. Some drag story hours, just like the July occasion in Helena, are unaffiliated with the group however produce comparable occasions. The founding group says the occasions are completely calibrated for younger people who find themselves studying in regards to the world round them. Drag Queen Story Hour, the web site says, “captures the creativeness and play of the gender fluidity of childhood”, whereas giving youngsters “glamorous, optimistic, and unabashedly queer position fashions”.
“In areas like this,” the outline continues, “youngsters are in a position to see individuals who defy inflexible gender restrictions and picture a world the place everybody will be their genuine selves!”
The group’s mission has drawn polarized responses. Supporters have welcomed bedazzled performers to libraries, bookstores and colleges, celebrating drag efficiency as an artwork type and antidote to normative gender roles. Opponents have demonstrated with indicators and bullhorns, framing the occasions as wicked and harmful for youngsters.
Jonathan Hamilt, govt director of Drag Queen Story Hour and drag performer, stated the group is used to seeing protesters stationed outdoors venues. However lately, far-right teams have begun disrupting story hours and different LGBTQ Delight occasions across the nation, an escalation fueled partly by the nationwide resurgence in homophobic and transphobic rhetoric smearing drag performers and queer folks as baby predators.
In June, a narrative hour in San Lorenzo, California, was thrown into chaos when a gaggle of self-identified Proud Boys stormed the venue, claiming they have been there to “shield the youngsters”. One man wore a shirt depicting a gun and the slogan “kill your native pedophile”. Regulation enforcement responded and later started investigating the coordinated disruption as a attainable hate crime.
This month, organisers of the Boise Delight pageant cancelled a scheduled “Drag Youngsters” occasion – the place younger performers deliberate to decorate up in costumes and sing alongside to pop songs – after far-right teams made threats towards the pageant and state Republican officers accused sponsors of selling the “sexualization of kids”. Regardless of a number of occasion sponsors subsequently withdrawing their funding, the pageant carried on. Information stories estimated attenders numbered within the 1000's.
Hamilt stated the rise in threatening language and hateful assaults has been surprising, however not essentially stunning.
“The thought of queer folks being harmful and being predators has been a story because the mid-Twentieth century,” they stated. “It’s nothing new. It’s only a new taste.”
This summer time’s drag story hours in Montana ignited comparable rhetoric and requires cancellation. In June, critics in Billings, Montana’s most populated metropolis, promised to protest towards the story hour and boycott the venue, ZooMontana.
Montana’s lone congressman, Republican Matt Rosendale, amplified the battle on Twitter, saying he was “appalled” by the zoo’s determination to host the studying and, in his phrases, “promote baby abuse and expose kids to inappropriate, sexual content material”.
Rosendale reiterated that stance in an interview with Washington Watch, a Christian conservative program of the nationwide Household Analysis Council. Host Tony Perkins accused drag story hours of “concentrating on” and “grooming” kids, and referred to as on dad and mom to “present up in full pressure” to protest towards the drag story hour occasions in Billings and elsewhere.
Finally, tons of of individuals attended the Billings story hour as supporters, far outnumbering the roughly 50 protesters who lined the road outdoors the zoo with indicators saying “drag belongs in a nightclub not in entrance of kids” and “cease sexualizing our youngsters”. One girl’s poster made a sharper accusation: “We all know the ‘+’ in LGBTQ+ means pedophile.”
When drag story hours are focused with that type of hateful rhetoric, Hamilt stated, the nationwide group sees no profit in participating in debate – anybody who's genuinely curious in regards to the historical past and tradition of drag can do their very own analysis in good religion. The group is forging forward with new studying curricula for youths and colleges, and planning extra occasions that search to normalize gender and cultural variety.
“Individuals neglect that that is queer programming. That is queer household programming,” Hamilt stated. “And below heteropatriarchy, there’s not a number of room for introspective or inventive pondering or complexity … Something deviant from that's deemed evil.”
Even when the protests and outright assaults proceed, Hamilt stated curiosity in drag story hours is unlikely to be deterred. If something, Hamilt stated, the optimistic reception of the studying occasions is rising.
“There’s a lot of queer folks and a number of queer households,” they stated. “And that’s the fact of the world.”
In the typically sleepy authorities city of Helena, inhabitants 32,655, the storefront of the Montana Ebook Firm has for years been turning heads of passersby with colourful posters and cheeky political quips scrawled on a sandwich board outdoors. In July, Helena’s annual Delight month, the shop had a colourful LGBTQ Delight flag fluttering close to the entrance door. An indication within the window stated “bodily autonomy is a human proper”. One other signal pasted above the doorway referred to as for “solidarity” in yellow script, encircled by a sub-slogan: “We're all we actually have.”
Crawford, 49, bespectacled and sometimes sporting a darkish baseball hat, and Rice, 44, with coiffed hair and a large smile, have co-owned the bookstore since 2018. The 2 former educators’ ardour for books and studying was what drove them to purchase the native enterprise. As flashpoints erupted in nationwide politics, the couple says the shop’s show of progressive politics has solely gotten “louder”.
“I really feel like we've extra folks come into the shop saying, ‘I observe you on Twitter or I observe you on Instagram. I really like what you all stand for. We got here right here due to that,’” Crawford stated. “After which they purchase books.”
The bookstore’s daring liberalism stands out within the reserved metropolis of presidency staff, public faculty academics and small-business homeowners. Town has sometimes been represented by Democrats within the state legislature, however is seen as much less overtly progressive than Montana’s college cities of Missoula and Bozeman. Residential areas outdoors Helena metropolis limits, largely to the north and east, have gone purple in current elections. In 2020, former president Donald Trump received Lewis and Clark county, which incorporates Helena, by 4 proportion factors. Trump received the state in each presidential election cycles with double-digit margins.
Regardless of its location in Helena’s extra progressive-signaling downtown, Crawford and Rice stated they've felt growing blowback towards the bookstore’s politics over the previous 5 years. Anti-LGBTQ insurance policies and rhetoric in Montana have change into extra mainstream since 2020, when Montanans elected socially conservative Republicans to each statewide and federal workplace on the poll.
Final yr, the first-term Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, signed three legal guidelines opposed by LGBTQ civil rights teams, together with a ban on transgender ladies and women enjoying on faculty sports activities groups that align with their gender identification. One other legislation made it a lot tougher for trans folks to replace the intercourse listed on their beginning certificates. After the coverage was blocked by a district court docket choose in April, the state well being division leapfrogged the court docket order to create an much more restrictive rule arguing that intercourse is a organic truth that may’t be modified.
The political turmoil of the 2021 legislative session made an indelible affect on many members of Montana’s LGBTQ+ neighborhood, and created a way of foreboding about what might occur when lawmakers return to Helena in January.
Crawford and Rice’s bookstore has change into a form of beacon for queer pleasure and resilience inside the tense political panorama, however their outspoken indicators and social media posts have additionally made them a lightning rod for adversity. The homeowners recount tales about some Helena residents coming inside the shop to disagree with their political slogans. The debates vary from civil disagreements to vocal hostility. Different occasions, the opposition comes within the type of hate mail.
In June, the unfavourable response took a brand new type: a person got here into the bookstore with a pistol strapped to his chest. Crawford and Rice say he repeatedly ignored requests to go away the shop when Crawford knowledgeable him that weapons weren’t allowed on the premises. Rice dialed 911. The person left earlier than police arrived however made an unsettling impression on the homeowners, who described his actions as deliberately intimidating.
The couple had twice hosted Drag Story Hour throughout Helena’s Delight week, in 2019 and 2021 (the 2020 occasion was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic). Till this yr, they stated, there had by no means been any opposition or threats of disruption. However after the chaos in San Lorenzo, the person with a gun of their retailer, and weeks of publicized outrage across the Billings occasion, Crawford and Rice have been on edge when anger about Helena’s drag story hour unfurled on social media.
Within the leadup to Delight, they gathered their staff to arrange for the occasion. “We sat down to speak about who can be ahead in retailer [near the entrance], what we'd do if any individual tried to assault us,” Rice stated. “We purchased all people mace and talked about how we most well-liked them to make use of it if mandatory. We strategized as a result of the nationwide menace is there.”
Publicly, Rice and Crawford have been cautious of stoking worry amongst households and youngsters who have been planning to attend. They have been trustworthy when clients requested in regards to the threats, however at all times ended with an encouraging message to point out up and have a very good time. Internally, each homeowners have been driving a wave of tension.
“Look, I’m type of a pessimist. And I don’t have the best religion in humanity,” Crawford stated. “I imply, the Oath Keepers and these Patriot Entrance folks and these Proud Boys … they’re harmful. They’re armed. And I don’t suppose they wish to go to jail, so possibly they’ll attempt to hold doing the appropriate factor. However I don’t belief them in any respect.”
For Crawford and Rice, the motivation to host Drag Story Hour isn’t about promoting extra merchandise or attracting new clients throughout Delight. As former academics, the couple has tried to make their retailer as welcoming to younger folks and oldsters as attainable. They don’t ask rowdy youngsters to go away, even when they by no means purchase something. They take discover after they haven’t seen a struggling child in a number of weeks: the subsequent time their dad and mom or mates come by way of, Crawford or Rice will ask how they’re doing.
Drag Story Hour, the homeowners say, is one other technique to make the shop a protected and celebratory setting for queer and questioning folks and their households.
“My expertise rising up as a youngster in a city very like Helena was that I didn’t know anyone in my downtown and I didn’t really feel snug staying in any of the shops, even when I had cash to spend,” Rice stated. “However I do know these youngsters and I do know their dad and mom … It's really a spot the place I believe we attempt to encompass younger folks with neighborhood that is aware of who they're and welcomes them.”
In mild of that guiding mission, the concept their bookstore might change into a spot of worry or trauma is one among their worst fears.
To make the occasion as protected as attainable, Rice started reaching out to mates, together with Thomas, to ask them to return right down to the shop that Saturday. One other veteran and patron of the bookstore, Kai Bauer, stated he had no hesitation in agreeing, due to the particular position Montana Ebook Firm performs locally.
“Not many individuals realise they’re a lot greater than a bookstore,” Bauer stated. “They're a protected haven for lots of younger folks … It’s a protected place for therefore many of us.”
The weekend of the occasion, Thomas and Bauer have been amongst a handful of former legislation enforcement officers and veterans, sporting T-shirts, baseball hats and cowboy boots, who gathered to patrol inside and out of doors the bookstore. Due to the appeals from Crawford, Rice and the drag performers, the unofficial safety crew was dwarfed by a few hundred native supporters.
Because the occasion started within the bookstore’s upstairs gallery, a rainbow-clad crowd gathered outdoors, the place police had blocked off a part of the road. Native bartenders, retirees, restaurant employees and advertising and marketing professionals joined different Delight-goers to create a buffer across the retailer’s entrance. Somebody began enjoying music from a cellular speaker, kicking off sporadic dancing below the early afternoon solar.
Inside, greater than 100 different folks, together with youngsters and oldsters with younger youngsters, crammed collectively to hearken to the Mister Sisters learn queer-friendly story books, together with Prince & Knight and The GayBCs.
On the road beneath, fewer than a dozen protesters, arms crossed and sun shades on, gathered on the sidewalk reverse the bookstore. A girl took images of the bigger crowd throughout the road. One man circled between the 2 sides of the road with a hand-written signal suggesting the drag queens inside have been pedophiles – he was typically obscured by a bookstore supporter diligently twirling a rainbow Delight flag.
At one level, a protester used a megaphone to inform the gang that the “sexualization of kids” is “morally reprehensible”. Quickly after he started talking, Crawford drowned out his voice with overlapping blasts from a purple airhorn they purchased from a close-by ironmongery store that morning.
The standoff was tense, with each teams conspicuously watching the opposite. However the sizable distinction between supporters and protesters appeared to embolden the shop’s defenders. Multiple one who joined the scene appeared pleasantly stunned after they noticed the protesters throughout the road, wryly asking different supporters, “Are these the folks we’re imagined to be afraid of?”
The battle on the road outdoors was invisible to the attenders crowded inside. After the studying, Julie Yard requested the viewers to speak in regards to the themes of affection, acceptance and neighborhood they heard within the books. Viewers members took images with Yard and the opposite performers. Individuals mingled and chatted with toddlers on their laps.
After roughly two hours, the protesters packed up their bullhorns and dispersed, trickling right into a bar down the block. The sunburnt and drained crowd of supporters started to skinny, planning the place to go earlier than the day’s subsequent Delight occasion. The drag queens exited by way of the again of the shop to keep away from any encounters with protesters. Julie Yard surreptitiously climbed into her husband’s automotive. It was solely after she left that Yard, who had spent many of the day beaming to her viewers, started to cry.
“I’m not an individual who’s going to burst into tears in entrance of individuals if I may also help it,” she stated. Driving away from the bookstore, Yard stated, she was “an emotional mess … in one of the best ways attainable”.
“Realizing every little thing that would have gone incorrect that didn’t, and simply seeing not solely the variety of people that have been on the occasion however the variety of people that confirmed up outdoors,” Yard stated. “That's what acquired to me.”
She wasn’t the one one who felt overwhelmed by the present of help. After the protesters left, Crawford thanked the remaining attenders grouped outdoors the shop. Rice stood at their facet, crying. Later, the homeowners reiterated their gratitude in an Instagram publish written by Crawford.
“I grew up in Helena,” the publish stated, “and let me let you know how a lot this place has modified. I felt really alone right here as a child homosexual within the late 80s/early 90s and to see the help, and the variety of people who come to Delight occasions, the flags, the indicators, houses with all of it up … makes me so completely happy for the younger and new members of the queer neighborhood. I hope we proceed to verify they aren't alone!”
Simply because the outpouring of help affirmed Helena’s LGBTQ neighborhood, Crawford and Rice acknowledged the turnout additionally confirmed how a lot locals worth the bookstore and all it represents – even when recognizing that reputation feels “braggy and icky”, in Crawford’s phrases.
“It simply feels bizarre to me to just accept that,” Crawford laughed. “Let’s have an area that individuals are proud to name their very own … And if folks wish to come and help that and help us, I’ll take that each one day.”
After the day of pleasure, and getting his picture taken with Julie Yard, Thomas drove again to his dwelling in Canyon Creek, a few half an hour north of Helena. He felt he had executed his half, in his personal approach, to face up for a gaggle of individuals being bullied.
“I type of felt a bit of proud,” he stated. “Like I used to be on the appropriate facet of historical past. I wasn’t on the merciless, ugly, hateful facet. I used to be on the completely happy, loving, enjoyable facet.”
This story is co-published with Montana Free Press
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