Keeping Kids Safe: Idaho MassResistance Activists Take Up All the Seats at Drag Queen Show in Local Library
Library director tried to order them to leave, but they refused. So the Drag Queen read LGBT children’s stories to the adults! Pro-LGBT activists brought children to the event, but the room was already full!
These parents took action and made a statement that resonated far and wide!
As in many other “red” states these days, the Marshall Public Library in Pocatello, a town in Bannock County in southeastern Idaho, is now staffed by leftists and LGBT activists. We’ve been told that one of the staffers is a drag queen at night.
Citizens in Bannock County had become outraged at the large number of obscene books and the Drag Queen Story Hours for children at the library. In mid-December 2022, one of them contacted MassResistance. We got right to work helping them. Within weeks, our new chapter there had nearly 50 people, which included members of local churches.
On January 17, a group of parents attended a Library Board meeting and read from some of the obscene books. But they were ignored. One Board member continued to deny that there was any obscene material in the library. But the parents had only gotten started!
Several Parents Attend the January Drag Queen Event in the Library
Most people have never seen a Drag Queen event for children. So several parents decided to attend the Marshall Library’s Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) held on January 21.
What they saw was ghastly. It was an attempt to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism in the minds of very young children. As the national DQSH website describes, its purpose is for bizarre men dressed as women to “give kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models” where “kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions.”
The library was clearly not interested in what parents in the community thought. So the parents decided that they would do something about it at the next event!
A Flood of Parents Filled the Room at the Library’s February Drag Queen Event!
The next Drag Queen Story Hour took place February 11, 2023.
Our activists initially planned to gather in the lobby of the library, just outside the meeting room of the DQSH. They were going to sing hymns so that the Drag Queens and the attendees in the main meeting room could hear them. If the police were called to force them to leave, then our team would go outside, stand around the library near the windows and sing. Everyone can hear people outside of the library, so it would have been a peaceful disruption.
But as the event came closer, they had the idea to go into the meeting room early and take up all the seats! That way, they would prevent adults from taking children into the story hour.
It worked. All of our activists showed up half an hour early with Bibles in their hands. They were going to read the Bible through the whole event. The library director saw what was going on, and he said to our activists: “If you are not here to participate then you need to leave.” None of our activists left. They reminded him that it was a publicly advertised event in a public place and he couldn’t simply order them out. So he backed down.
A few minutes before the program, one of the activists emailed Arthur Schaper, our Field Director:
Hi Arthur,
I’m with my wife at the Pocatello library where the drag queen story hour is planned for 1:30 today. The room is packed with Christian conservatives and NO KIDS. They are trying to ask us to leave. But we are peacefully staying … and protecting.
The room is full and they are frustrated. Well done Mass Resistance!!!
As the event was about to begin, the director came back and asked some of the activists to give up their seats, so that the parents (?) with children in the lobby could come inside. Not one of our activists budged! There were several children who had been brought to this DQSH event. But none of them could get in.
The Drag Queens read LGBT children’s books and sang songs, as they had the month before. But they ended it early and left. The program lasted about thirty minutes.
The Drag Queens Respond to What Happened
This clearly took the library staff and the Drag Queens by surprise, especially when they realized they couldn’t legally do anything about it. Here’s a statement soon after the February 11, 2023 event from the Drag Queen group. Notice that they blatantly mislead the public about the purpose of these events.
We apologize to the families who attended our Pocatello program and were asked to leave due to us having gone over fire code capacity. Our programs are for everyone, and all are welcome, but we ask that community members without children consider making room for parents and children if we reach capacity in the future.
More than anything, we are disheartened that those who chose to stay removed an opportunity for children in our community to laugh, learn ASL, sing songs, and read books together. Children and families in Pocatello deserve spaces that exist to bring them joy, encourage their literacy, and support their lives as whole, complete people. Reading Time’s mission is to have drag performers read stories that will teach us how to accept and love ourselves and others. The only plan we have for the future is to continue doing work to serve this mission. Any community members who disagree with this mission are free to design their own program accordingly.
The Left-Wing Media Erupts
Not surprisingly, the liberal media both locally and across Idaho didn’t like this creative disruption one bit, and engaged in their usual name-calling and character assassination. For example:
… But Library Removes Display Featuring LGBT Books
In the end, the library staff seems to have gotten the message. Soon afterwards our Pocatello team noticed that a brazen display of pro-LGBT books that had been in the center of the library was removed.
We’ll see what happens in March!
Final Thoughts
The fact that enough pro-family people showed up to take every single seat — and they wouldn’t leave when “ordered” — was much more of a psychological blow to the staff than anything else. Library employees like to believe their own propaganda: that it’s just “a few cranks and extremists” who oppose what they’re doing to children. But that this many people came and were resolute sent a strong message that there are many more who are just as determined.
This is a wonderful model for others to imitate. And MassResistance is there to help make it happen!
Originally published at massresistance.org. Reprinted with permission. For additional media content, see original post.
