NC tied for most protests and threats against drag events, advocacy group says

UNION COUNTY, N.C. — Families at a drag story hour event in Union County earlier this year expected all eyes to be on the drag queens.

Instead, the focus shifted to demonstrators protesting the event.

“We didn’t start receiving any backlash, actually, until this year we received some when we first started, and then it died down,” said Joshua Jernigan, organizer of the Charlotte Area Drag Story Hour. “And this year, it seems to have ramped up significantly.”

Jernigan said the group hosted four events in 2022. They had to change venues several times because of anticipated protesters.

“We had a lot of pushback with Union County Pride and we took cancelling very seriously,” he said.

Jernigan didn’t cancel, instead finding a different venue. He says they do everything in their power to avoid calling off the events.

“If we canceled every story hour that got a little bit of pushback, we would never have a story hour,” he said.

A report from GLAAD, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, found that at least 124 drag events across 47 states have faced protests and threats so far this year. That data did not include a deadly mass shooting during a drag event at a nightclub in Colorado earlier this month.

North Carolina was tied with Texas for the most drag events targeted in these incidents, with 10. The report said more protests and threats may have occurred and were not documented.

“I think that the world has become a little extremist in everything that they do, and so people have needed a boogeyman, and somehow story hours became that boogeyman,” Jernigan said.

He wants past protesters to come out to the group’s next event with a different perspective and an open mind.

“I would love to see education pushed out about it,” he said. “I would love to see people who’ve been to these events talk about them more openly.”

Republicans in the U.S. House introduced the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act” to the legislature last month. If passed, it would ban drag shows at federally funded buildings like schools and libraries.

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