It didn’t surprise drag queens Akasha L Van-Cartier and Ona Louise that a threat on social media forced the Carnegie Library in Oakland and the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh to cancel their “Drag Queen Story Hour” programs this past Friday and Saturday.
“Being queer… you get hate every day,” said Jonathan Hamilt, whose drag name is Ona Louise and is co-founder of the national “Drag Queen Story Hour” program. “This is nothing new,” he said.
Akasha, a local drag queen whose real name is Michael King, agreed. She’s a regular participant in Pittsburgh’s story hours “I’ve seen a lot of my sisters suffer,” she said, but added that the cancellations still upset her. Mr. Hamilt shared her feelings.
“It was really unfortunate,” he said, noting that the readings were half of why he came to Pittsburgh. A New York resident, in town for the 2019 Children’s Institute conference, Mr. Hamilt was scheduled to read at both the Children’s Museum and the Oakland library before their story hour events were canceled. Instead, Mr. Hamilt participated in Shadyside’s remembrance celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City and “Drag Queen Story Hour” at the Andy Warhol Museum, which did not get canceled.
Mr. Hamilt borrowed the concept of “Drag Queen Story Hour” from the program’s founder, Michelle Tea, who began it in San Francisco in 2015. With her blessing, he brought the program to New York in 2016 and began expanding it to include 43 nationwide chapters. The Carnegie Library has been hosting “Drag Queen Story Hour” since 2017. It has not received any direct threats, according to Suzanne Thinnes, the communications manager at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, but anti-drag commentary that appeared on the social media site Reddit was “alarming enough” to take action.
“I totally get why they canceled,” Mr. Hamilt said. “Having a safe and secure reading is always our goal.”
Pittsburgh police said Tuesday that the FBI is now investigating the threat.
But Pittsburgh is not the only place where the story hour has faced pushback recently.
The Washington Post reported that in Leander, Texas, in late May, city officials canceled a drag queen story hour that was to be hosted by the library. But then a LGBT-friendly church in the area, Open Cathedral, stepped in to host it.
And in Ohio in early June, state Speaker Larry Householder condemned drag queen story time in a letter to the Ohio Library Council. He called the events “a stunningly bizarre breach of the public trust,” according to the New York Times.
Two libraries in central Ohio then canceled drag story times after receiving what the library council said were “hostile threats.”
The Ohio Library Council issued a statement supporting events like drag queen story time.
While Ms. Thinnes said that it’s library protocol for extra security to be present at the drag queen story hours, out of an abundance of caution it seemed safer to cancel the event.
“It’s really scary to think that people would threaten my life for educating a child,” said Akasha, praising the program’s lessons on tolerance and acceptance. “It’s 2019. There are all types of people… and all of their differences have to be recognized.”
As a kid with no queer role models, Akasha said she wishes that “Drag Queen Story Hour” would have existed when she was growing up.
“The program itself has great messaging,” Ms. Thinnes agreed, noting that it promotes literacy, kindness and understanding. “It’s wildly, wildly popular,” she added, “Children and families love it.”
The library’s “Drag Queen Story Hour” had already planned to end for the summer but will return next season, Ms. Thinnes said.
“We have every intention of continuing “Drag Queen Story Hour,” she said, despite a separate online petition with 16,000 signatures organized by an anti-LGBT group urging the Carnegie Library to cancel the program.
Akasha said she has every intention to remain part of it: “I won’t back down to hatred and fear.”
Neither, it seems, will Mr. Hamilt. “Drag Queen Story Hour” is working closely with the American Civil Liberties Union to formulate policies on online trolling and digital hate speech, he said.
“It’s scary, but at the same time, out of fear comes change,” Akasha said.
Staff writer Andrea Klick contributed. Kaisha Jantsch: kjantsch@post-gazette.com
First Published: July 1, 2019, 10:06 p.m.