The High Peaks

Back in my college days I tried to hike Mt. Marcy in the Adirondack High Peaks, it was over Thanksgiving but I didn’t have the right clothes for the trip and turned back. But now there is a new battle-a-brewing there at the Olympic town over, you guested it, drag queens.

Drag queen story hour prompts controversy in Lake Luzerne
Meeting at Rockwell Falls Public Library commandeered by people who showed up to oppose upcoming event
Times-Union
By Kathleen Moore
April 12, 2023

More than 40 people filled a small library Tuesday night to insist that officials cancel an upcoming drag queen story hour.

Seven people came in favor of the event. The rest were deeply opposed, saying it could lead their children to become gay or transgender and ruin their innocence by exposing them to sexuality.

Protests against such events have become more common amid the current culture wars, with legislation restricting or banning drag performances cropping up across the country.

The Rockwell Falls Public Library board had scheduled an emergency meeting Tuesday to accept the sudden resignation of the board president and choose short-term leaders before next month’s election. They completed those tasks quickly and adjourned. Those who showed up to protest about the story hour did not have “privilege of the floor” based on the agenda, but resident Josh Jacquard argued board members into listening to the public.

A simple answer… don’t bring your children to the event. But don’t tell others what they can and cannot do.

Albany drag queen Scarlet Sagamore — whose name evokes the Adirondacks — is scheduled to read three books to children at 10:15 a.m. Saturday. The books are “All Are Welcome,” in which students from different backgrounds are welcomed at school; “Just Add Glitter,” about a little girl who adds glitter to everything; and “Red: A Crayon Story,” about a crayon that was made with the wrong color label.

They jump up and down over “their rights” while denying others of their rights, it seems like they think that it is a one-way street!

Two speakers said all drag queen performances are inherently sexual, appearing to conflate story time with a drag show, and others predicted the event would lead to children becoming drag queens, calling the event a “ruse” and an example of “grooming” — a term borrowed from the lexicon of sexual-abuse pathology that has been broadly applied by some conservatives to apply to any discussion of sexuality that might be heard by children.

Awk! Polly wants a cracker. They are just parroting the right-wing ideology and they probably have never even seen a drag queen but they are against it because they are told that they have to be against it to keep their MAGA lapel pin.

Those speaking in favor tried to argue that the event was not sexual. Opponents shouted at them many times, leading the library board to create a makeshift gavel out of a metal Thermos, which they banged on the table to enforce order. When that failed, which it did several times, board members shouted to regain control of the room and insisted that one person speak at a time.

Ah, the old tried and true method of shooting down your opposition and denying them of their rights and courtesy.

“Unlike most of you, I spoke to the performer directly,” resident Jade Eddy . “He’s going to be reading a book about crayons and a book about glitter. I’d like to know what is sexual about that?”

Another woman, who said she had attended similar story hours elsewhere, said they did not include “grooming.” She added that exposure to transgender or gay people would not make a child transgender or gay.

“As a member of the arts community, I’ve spent decades around people — many gender-fluid people, many straight people, many gay people,” Xanath Bailey said. “I have to say, after all that exposure, at nearly 60 I’m still a cisgendered woman.” (Cisgender is the term for a sexual identity that conforms with a person’s sex at birth.).

The conservatives are still living in the 1950s… being LGBTQ+ is not a contagion.

Another ray of sanity,

“As a library, we should not let a few people govern what they feel we should hold as events,” Keir said in an interview after the meeting. “If we were to let people stop it, that’s an infringement of human rights.”

The Post Star reported.

One speaker who referred to himself as a “much-recycled” Presbyterian minister, said that he doesn’t expect society as a whole to follow his “rather traditional moral Christian beliefs,” but found it inappropriate for a publicly funded facility to hold a drag story hour.

Um... that is exactly why it should be held. The library shouldn't choose who can and cannot speak, it should be an open forum.

Although there was a clear difference of opinion throughout the room, all agreed that it is important for the library to be a place for children to be exposed to and surrounded by a joy for reading and learning. Several members of the public, on both sides of the issue, thanked the library board and the staff for their hard work and dedication to that goal.

Then why are you having this discussion?

Last heard the event is going on tomorrow.