LNP/Lancaster Online
What threats of violence led to cancellation of Drag Queen Story Hour in Lancaster?
LNP reporter who was targeted with threats tells the story
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Scott LaMar
LNP/Lancaster Online
Aired; March 25th, 2024.
The culture wars in this country are a clash of ideologies or beliefs. But sometimes – maybe even more often today – those emotional differences result in threats of violence or violence itself.
In a day that will be long remembered, the city of Lancaster was the center of the culture wars Saturday.
The Drag Queen Story Hour event was scheduled for the Lancaster Public Library Saturday morning. As part of the event, Christopher Paolini — dressed in his drag costume — was to perform and recite stories geared toward children.
Hundreds of people, that included children and their families, had signed up to attend.
The Story Hour was cancelled after a suspicious package was found and bomb threats were emailed that referenced the library, and the home addresses of the library’s executive director, the president of Lancaster Pride and LNP journalist Dan Nephin.
Nephin reported on the events all day Saturday and then became part of the story.
Dan Nephin was with us on The Spark Monday and read the contents of the email threat.”It says “we are the ones that placed bombs at the Lancaster Public Library. We will kill Tiffany Shirley. That’s the head of Lancaster Pride. We placed a bomb in her home and the home of Lissa Holland. That’s the library executive director. My home. Starbucks in Lancaster. Lancaster Online office. At 1:30, the bombs will detonate. Bring the fire department. We placed pipe bombs as well as fuel. Bombs will likely cause a fire spreading to other buildings. Evacuate so no innocents die. You are exploitive, degenerate pedophiles, child abusers, or expletive cowards who rather let our children get preyed upon than be called a bigot? Expletive you degenerates, we will kill you all and purify our land.” That is terrifying to have received.”
Nephin said that Lancaster Mayor Danene Sorace called him to tell him he was mentioned in the email threat,”I reacted with some words and I’m not going to be able to say on the radio, and I knew I had to call home, let my partner know that something was up and she had to get the heck out of the house. But I’m also thinking “can I get a comment from you?” Because I knew we had to say that she also said that there was an evacuation and that there had been bomb threats elsewhere. So I was on the phone with her for about a minute. I hung up frantically, told Kathleen (his partner) to get out of the house again, using words I can’t use here. But you can imagine what they are. And she asked where to go. I said, I can’t tell you, I don’t know, just get the hell out of there. I went over to my desk, and then I saw in my email the email that we shared, virtually everything about it except by redacting the addresses and, saying expletive instead of the words that were used. So I forward that to my bosses. Then we realized that we, LNP, that we, we’re also, mentioned that there was a bomb here, so we had to evacuate and relocate. We had probably a little over a dozen of our staff and reporters working. We just didn’t know what to expect. There had been a lot of calls for protests and whatnot, so we had to scramble and relocate, to continue to do our our job at that point. We left and we were out of here in probably less than five minutes.”
Lancaster County Commissioners Josh Parsons and Ray D’Augostino were among those who criticized the library holding the event, in essence saying it wasn’t appropriate for children. A prayer vigil was held Friday night with participants asking God to stop the event, but they didn’t call for violence.
Nephin quoted library officials as saying the Commissioners’ criticism brought more attention to the event and helped to increase attendance.
Nephin reported later Monday that the suspicious box contained coloring books according to Lancaster Police.
