Drag Queen Story Hours in the UK are now being targeted by far-right protestors as anti-gay disinformation spreads
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- Far-right and anti-gay protesters have started targeting drag queens in the UK.
- Protesters showed up to two Drag Queen Story Hour events there this week.
- Similar protests at the story hours have occured in the US as part of an anti-gay campaign.
A group of far-right and anti-gay protesters forced a planned Drag Queen Story Hour event to postpone its reading in the United Kingdom this week, after a crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the library where it was set to take place.
About 30 protesters showed up at the event in the city of Bristol with counter protesters arriving after, according to the BBC. Police at the scene arrested one woman on suspicion of assault, according to the report, but later released her.
"Officers attended to facilitate peaceful protest and enable library staff and visitors, the event organisers and the wider community to go about their lawful business," a police spokesperson said, according to the BBC.
The protest in Bristol is one of several incidents in recent months where far-right groups have targeted drag events intended for children and families. In the United States and the UK, right-wing influencers have pushed an online campaign that baselessly accuses drag performers of sexually "grooming" children and promotes long standing anti-LGBTQ conspiracies.
A Drag Queen Story Hour is an event where a drag queen reads stories to children, often at a library or another similar venue. At the scheduled Tuesday event at Henleaze Library in Bristol, a librarian instead read to the children and parents who showed up, according to the BBC report.
A similar clash occurred in Reading in the UK on Monday, Metro reported. In that incident, the story hour went ahead as scheduled, but protesters entered the library. The protesters accused parents who brought their children to the reading of participating in "child-grooming," the report said.
Other protesters at the Monday demonstration remained outside and taunted organizer Sab Samuel and the parents who brought children to the event, the report said. Police escorted Samuel outside of the library for their own safety, according to Metro.
These anti-gay protests in the UK have been organized by the same British groups that previously protested measures to stem the spread of COVID-19 and vaccines to prevent serious cases of the disease, according to the BBC report.
Some of the protesters came from Alpha Men Assemble, a conspiracy theorist group that is part of the sovereign citizen movement and whose adherents believe they have the right to opt out of laws that they disagree with, the BBC reported. Others in attendance came to represent the Independent Nationalist Network, a small group associated with the far-right and unofficially led by Richard Lumby, a former organizer for the extreme-right British National Party, according to anti-racism organization Hope Not Hate.
The incidents in the UK appear to indicate that the anti-gay disinformation campaign baselessly attempting to associate LGBTQ people with pedophilia and "grooming" extends beyond the borders of the US, where drag queens for months have been targeted by right-wing politicians and influencers.
A leader of a neo-Nazi group was arrested at a Drag Story Hour event in Boston last weekend. About 20 men showed up wearing black face masks and held a banner that read "Pedo scum off our streets." Members of the far-right Proud Boys group also disrupted a Drag Queen Story Hour at a library in California last month, resulting in local authorities launching a hate crime investigation.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/JlyYFT1
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