Ahead of Charlotte Drag Queen Story Hour, organizers tout security measures

Drag Queen Story Hours in the Charlotte area are selling out but in recent months nationwide protests have amped up, causing organizers to implement security measures.

There has always been push back against the readings, but nothing like what the group is seeing now, said Joshua Jernigan, co-founder of Charlotte Area Drag Story Hour.

“I never thought we would have an entire security protocol and security team to do some story hours,” Jernigan said. “That’s been blowing my mind.”

Charlotte Area Drag Story hour is a local chapter of Drag Story Hour, a national organization. The group held its first local reading in March 2019. Drag Story Hour, formed in 2015, encourages children to read and to be their authentic selves by giving them queer role models, according to the organization.

Typically a drag queen or king leads creative activities, reads a book to the children and may perform songs and dances.

Charlotte Area Drag Queen Story Hour will hold a reading with Karen Affection, a local drag queen, Saturday at 1 p.m. The theme is “Silly You” and is free. Registration is required and the event is sold out.

Protesters typically say the events “groom” and “sexualize” children. Organizers say this is false and the purpose of the events are to promote literacy and diversity and that all events are age appropriate.

When the Charlotte group held its first story hour in Gastonia, there were about 10 protesters, Jernigan said. The protesters were peaceful and handed out Bibles and Christian leaflets on the sidewalk near the event.

Now, things are much more violent, Jernigan said.

“We have had some of the most verbally violent … protesters that have come to our events now to protest and holding up signs and screaming things that are wholly inappropriate to scream around children, all under the guise of ‘protecting kids,’” Jernigan said. “Which is kind of silly to me, because the only inappropriate things happening at our story hours are those people with their signs.”

The group’s most recent reading in February at the Comedy Arts Theater of Charlotte attracted some protesters. Signs read: “Stop grooming children” and “Stop sexualizing children.”

In the fall of 2022, a Republican congressional candidate called on protesters to attend a story hour during the Charlotte International Arts Festival.

Volunteers from Charlotte’s Clinic Defenders, who help escort patients away from protesters and into reproductive health clinics in the area, were also at the last reading shielding children from protesters using their signature rainbow umbrellas. They have partnered with the group since its founding.

Other volunteers stand outside the building to de-escalate conflicts, and to sing and play music that drowns out the noise as kids enter the building.

The group also notifies Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police of each event. And it has door security to ensure all participants are registered.

Jernigan said he has gotten some emails from worried parents who want to bring their children to the events, but are afraid of protesters.

Jernigan says his own daughter, who is 7, loves attending the story hours and seeing the “transforming ladies,” as she calls them.

“One of the things I always reassure parents is I will be the very first person to cancel an event if it becomes unsafe, I would never ask you to put your child in danger, or in any thought of danger that I wouldn’t put my own child in,” he said.

An increase in anti-drag rhetoric

Over the past year, violent rhetoric condemning drag performers has increased, according to GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy organization.

North Carolina came in second place, just after Texas, as the state with the most attacks on drag events in 2022, according to a report by GLAAD.

At least eight states have introduced bills that would ban drag performances under some circumstances, and earlier this month Tennessee became the first state to ban drag shows in public places.

This isn’t the first time drag has come under fire or been banned by politicians. In 1863, San Francisco issued the first drag ban in the U.S., according to reporting by NPR.

Attending the story hour means a lot to the kids, and the program is all about reflecting diversity through drag, Jernigan said.

One of the readers who volunteers with the group, Shelita Bonet Hoyle, said in a post to social media shared by the group, that she became a reader to be the type of role model she needed when she was younger.

“When I was growing up in a small town in North Carolina there was no one around like me. There was no one who was unapologetically queer,” Hoyle said. “There was no one who sounded like me — or looked like me. Most people around me were terrified to take up space — or be themselves — proudly.”

As an adult, Hoyle learned that being different wasn’t something to be ashamed of or something to hide, she said. Now she hopes to pass on that confidence.

“If being a positive role model to a child and helping them understand that they are perfect just the way they are, if helping them realize that sooner than I did … if that makes me a monster, or any other name … then so be it,” Hoyle said.