Residents defend library drag queen story hour at Lancaster County commissioners meeting

• By Tom Lisi, Ann Rejrat and Brett Sholtis/ LNP | LancasterOnline

About 20 people packed into the Lancaster County commissioners meeting Wednesday, many of them criticizing the two Republican commissioners for their social media posts and public comments against an upcoming Drag Queen Story Hour for children at Lancaster Public Library.

Commenters accused Commissioners Josh Parsons and Ray D’Agostino of willfully misrepresenting the March 23 event for political gain.

Drag Queen Story Hour, scheduled for 1 p.m. next Saturday at the North Queen Street library in downtown Lancaster, will be hosted by Miss Amie Vanité, a longtime Central Pennsylvania drag performer who launched a regional chapter of Drag Queen Story Hour in 2018, according to the library’s event description.

The library’s online calendar describes the event as “Stories, songs, crafts, creativity, dancing and drag: Join Miss Amie Vanité as she spreads awareness and acceptance by celebrating diversity, inclusiveness, kindness and love through LGBTQ+ literature for young readers.”

Pilisa Mackey, a Lancaster city resident and organizer with the activist group Lancaster Changemakers Collective, told the commissioners she believes “events like Drag Queen Story Hour help to educate kids in an age-appropriate way about the beauty of the queer community, the importance of affirming and accepting people of all gender identities and presentation.”

“This is a message we should all be sending,” she said.

The speakers said they objected to the language Parsons and D’Agostino used to criticize the event as inappropriate for children.

Parsons first posted on Facebook and X about the event last Thursday and directed concerned residents to contact the library’s board of trustees. “Libraries should be places for kids to safely read and learn, not politicized social laboratories for woke ideology,” Parsons wrote.

D’Agostino followed with a similar post Friday on Facebook. “How is it that we wonder why children today are more confused, anxious and stressed than ever when people are trying to push adult themed issues at such an early age?” D’Agostino wrote. “This is about the safety of our children.”

On age-appropriate content

Anticipating public criticism at Wednesday’s meeting, the two commissioners responded to the first speaker by presenting a slide on TV monitors that showed excerpts from social media about another recent show by the same drag performer.

The excerpts appeared to come from a Feb. 17 event called “Drag Queen Story Hour After Hours” at Chatty Monks Brewery in West Reading. The Facebook promotion said attendees needed to be at least 18 years old and included tongue-in-cheek, hypersexualized language parodying children’s book-reading events hosted by drag queens.

“Much like a regular Story Hour, Amie will read stories and perform songs…but nothing about this show is appropriate for your semen demon offspring,” the promotion read.

“Any rational adult is going to look at this and tell you that someone who is objectifying children in this sexual way should not be presenting a program in a library,” Parsons said.

An excerpt of the same promotion for the adult event at Chatty Monks Brewery appeared Wednesday afternoon on the prominent far-right, anti-LGBTQ social media account Libs of Tiktok. The post presented the description of the library event next to the Chatty Monks promotion, strongly suggesting they were from the same event.

The social media account has millions of followers and has been a prominent online meme generator for far-right causes and misinformation campaigns. The account, run by activist Chaya Raichik, has been accused of sparking bomb threats, property damage, shooting threats, harassment and violence targeted at individuals, hospitals and schools all over the U.S., according to the Washington Post.

Commenters speaking in support of the scheduled story hour said the blurb from the Feb. 17 event was clearly geared to adults, while the library event is not.

“I can’t think of one of my colleagues who’s a performer in Lancaster who would show up half naked or do sexually explicit content for children,” said Mackey, who told commissioners she also has performed at children’s events and done adult theater shows. “We gear it to who they’re working with, which is what Miss Amie is doing.”

Ripple effects

On Wednesday, Christopher Paolini, who has performed as the character Amie Vanité for 20 years, said he disagreed with any idea that his adult-oriented performances would make him unqualified to also perform for children.

“It’s basically the same thing as saying a teacher is not allowed to go out to a bar at night and have a couple drinks and dance,” Paolini said. “Or because this is your day job, you can’t do this at night. You can’t have adult time with friends, away from children.”

When performing for children, Paolini plays guitar and plays songs such as “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony),” “If You Want to Hear a Story Clap Your Hands,” and “The Rainbow Connection” from “The Muppet Movie.”

“It is a very, very wholesome program that is suitable for all ages, which I have also done in a nursing home,” Paolini said.

Commenters, including Angelique Chelton, a pastor at Pilgrims Mennonite Church in Akron, said Parsons’ and D’Agostino’s comments on the story hour harmed the LGBTQ community, particularly school-age children who deal with bullying and struggle to reconcile their identity with the broader community.

“Please stop, because it is dangerous to children who are told, ‘There is no place for you, there is no place you can go to see people who maybe are LGBTQ and who are living incorporated lives into our society,’ ” Chelton said. “Our kids deserve to see people like them in public.”

Several commenters referenced recent suicides of local transgender youth, including 22-year-old Ashton Clatterbuck of Martic Township, who died by suicide last month, saying the two commissioners’ comments added to the vitriol young queer people face at school and in the public realm.

“You cannot separate the mischaracterization of a Drag Queen Story Hour held by Lancaster Pride from the effects that has on queer and transgender youth, who see this mischaracterization from their government officials and say, ‘I don’t belong here,’ ” Mackey said.

Parsons and D’Agostino both took exception to accusations that they were spreading hate or contributing to the potential for suicides among LGBTQ youth.

“I think that that is a tactic of the left: to say, ‘Josh you’re killing people, therefore you can’t respond to something that you feel strongly about,” Parsons said.

One person spoke in support of Parsons’ and D’Agostino’s comments on the story hour at the Wednesday commissioners meeting. Joel Saint, a Denver resident and pastor at the Independence Reformed Bible Church, is a frequent speaker at commissioners meetings and called the drag queen story hour “appalling.”

“Thank you, commissioners, for standing up against this event, which is horrific.”

Ben Cattell Noll, a Lancaster resident who said he planned to take his family to the story hour later this month, called on Parsons to condemn social media users who responded to his posts with personal attacks on parents who plan to take their children to the event. Some of those responses called these parents “pedophiles” and “groomers.”

Parsons didn’t directly answer Cattell Noll’s request. “There’s all kinds of awful things hurled around about people. People can make their own decisions about those items. I don’t endorse any hate whatsoever,” he said.

Toward the end of the public comment session Wednesday, Democratic Commissioner Alice Yoder addressed the issue for the first time since Parsons and D’Agostino took to social media last week. Deklan Rupp of Lancaster city commented earlier that Yoder’s “silence was deafening.”

Yoder said she was excited about the event and thought it was an example for other organizations in the county to provide LGBTQ-friendly events for families.

The Democrat said she didn’t comment on it previously because it didn’t seem like an issue that had a connection to the board of commissioners.

“I want to make sure that we don’t leave here today without the LGBTQ community knowing that I am in support of them in their community and any of the work that needs to be done to support (them), and to particularly focus on children so that their mental health and well-being is well preserved,” Yoder said.