Ohio drag queens refuse to quit as violence, intimidation by Nazi protesters increase

Nazis protested drag events in Columbus and Wadsworth. An Ohio White Lives Matter member faces federal charges for tossing Molotov cocktails into a Chesterland church hosting a drag brunch. And the organizers of Small Town Pride in Celina say their sponsors are being bombarded by hateful and sometimes threatening phone calls.

"I think drag has become the battleground in this national debate over LGBTQ rights because of this rhetoric around grooming," said Treva Lindsey, an Ohio State University professor of women's, gender and sexuality studies.

The idea circulated among conservative circles by writers like Chris Rufo that the purpose of drag events, especially those marketed toward children, is to "groom" kids into embracing genderfluidity, "subversion of the middle-class family life," and ultimately, the abolition of restrictions on pedophilia.

"That language has become deeply weaponized against transgender people and people who participate in drag culture," Lindsey said.

Drag events were the most common LGBTQ event to report violence, assault, or harassment from June 2022 to April 2023, according to a report released Thursday morning by the Anti-Defamation League and LGBTQ organization GLAAD. And nearly half of all incidents (49%) were perpetrated wholly or substantially by individuals associated with extremist groups.

"We’ve started to have pretty regular conversations with various levels of law enforcement just to keep us apprised of when there is a threat serious enough," Equality Ohio Policy Director Maria Bruno said. "I just keep telling people this is going to get worse before it gets better."

Big objections to Small Town Pride

Kyle Bruce, 22, started Celina's annual pride event in June 2020 after his mother's home was vandalized. Their pride flag was stolen, their house was egged, and Bruce's car was keyed.

"We were expecting twentyish people to come to the park pavilion," Bruce said. "But it quickly reached over 400 people who said they were willing to attend. It was huge."

So huge that it caught the attention of a Lima drag queen named Kody Boggs (Redd Velvet).

He grew up in a small Ohio town and immediately wanted to volunteer. Boggs recruited five fellow drag queens to go with him to Small Town Pride and perform for free in 2021.

"It felt like this RuPaul Drag Race deal because these people have never seen drag. They’ve only seen it on TV," Boggs said. "People were coming up to us for pictures. We were signing autographs... It meant so much more to these people than we thought."

Celina is a deep red city near the Indiana border where more than 70% of voters chose Donald Trump in the last presidential election. And objections to the drag performance have ratcheted up this year.

“I’m not asking for the Pride event to be canceled,” Ashley Briggs said at a May City Council meeting. “I’m asking for the drag show to not be viewable by minors. It should be indoors, at a strip club, where it belongs. Just like we don’t want strippers on poles in schools, we don’t want drag performers to present themselves in front of children.”

Briggs could not be reached for comment, but she told the council video of last year's show bothered her. Specifically, the part where one of the queens did splits and other moves where her leotard did not fully cover her butt.

"She's a gymnast," Boggs said when asked about that part of the 2022 show. "She has a background in dance. She is known for doing a lot of acrobatics. They are twisting it to make it seem worse than what it was."

Celina City Law Director George Moore, Council President Jason King, and Mayor Jeffrey Hazel did not respond to requests for comment. But Moore cautioned the council against revoking the Small Town Pride permit over this, saying it could violate the First Amendment.

Instead, Councilman Mark Fleck encouraged the meeting's attendees to keep an eye on Saturday's event. A statement Small Town Pride organizers interpreted as permission to intimate them.

In 2022, two crying attendees told him someone using Small Town Pride's logo wrote down their personal information and then told them they were going to hell. This year, some of the event's business sponsors backed out, telling Bruce they couldn't handle the constant phone calls from opponents.

"They are just serial phone calling these businesses," Bruce said. "They're not being kind. They're harassing them, asking why a business would be supporting pedophiles."

He said they aren't forcing anyone to attend, and if people think the drag show is inappropriate for their children, don't bring them. What does worry him though, is whether people from outside Celina, people like Blood Tribe, White Lives Matter and neo-Nazis might show up.

That's what happened at a Drag Queen Story Hour event in Wadsworth in March. Hundreds of protesters, including white supremacists and neo-Nazis, showed up at the city’s Memorial Park.

"We at one point had to send our daughter away and install cameras in our house," event organizer Aaron Reed said. "People following us around stores yelling groomer and pedophile. It's, it's scary."

Local residents who showed up to protest the event told the Akron Beacon Journal they were shocked to see the Nazis and were there because they believed drag events should be for adults only.

"We weren’t all on one side," Kristopher Anderson told the Beacon Journal. "These were like factions against an issue."

More: Nazi salutes, pepper spray and pistols: Ohio drag event devolves into an extremist melee

Two people, one in support and one against the event, were charged with disorderly conduct.

A man who allegedly tried to burn down a church outside Toledo hosting a drag brunch faces federal charges for violating the Church Arson Prevention Act.

"He told police he was targeting the church in order to save the children," said Sarah Moore, who tracks anti-LGBTQ extremism for the Anti-Defamation League. "This rhetoric has started to play out in terms of actual violence being enacted."

Drag in the national spotlight

Nazi intimidation of drag performances has increased alongside anti-drag legislation, Moore said. At least 14 states have introduced bills restricting or banning drag. A federal judge struck down Tennessee's Adult Entertainment Act as unconstitutional in June, but Ohio cities like Bellfontaine and Wadsworth are mulling similar measures.

"There's this idea that drag performances are always hypersexualized," Moore said. "I think it’s taking away from the agency of the drag performers themselves."

But she understands why the argument is so compelling.

"Kids are such a sacred part of our society, and the second you insinuate that something is harmful to children, it’s instantly going to raise alarm bells and get everybody’s attention because who doesn’t want to protect children," Moore said.

She said it started with conservative writers like Rufo, but the idea went mainstream in 2022 when Florida passed a law restricting how teachers talk about sexuality.

Opponents of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called the legislation "Don't Say Gay," and his press secretary countered, labeling it the anti-grooming bill.

“If you’re against the Anti-Grooming bill, you are probably a groomer, or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4 (to) 8-year-old children,” Christina Pushaw wrote on Twitter.

Since then, beliefs that drag performers are groomers and pedophiles have been the most-cited anti-LGBTQ trope in her analysis of incidents of harassment, intimidation and violence.

"This notion that this one off, drag story time is an attempt to groom is disingenuous based on what we know grooming looks like and what patterns of predation on children looks like," Lindsey said.

Grooming a child for an inappropriate sexual relationship, she said, requires repeated contact with a minor over weeks or even months with the intent of silencing them about the abuse out of fear or a misguided belief that the relationship is appropriate but would be misunderstood by the outside world.

"I think people really fear what it means to have a world where people do not adhere to a gender binary," Lindsey said. "Where people do not believe that the religious ideas around gender and sexuality do not apply to everyone."

Rep. Casey Weinstein, D-Hudson, sees it as a tool to motivate turnout for Republican candidates on Election Day. But as one of two Jewish members of Ohio's General Assembly, the willingness of Ohioans to stand adjacent to Nazis at these protests gives him pause.

"It keeps me up at night. I just wonder about my kids' future in this state," he said. "I’m raising three Jewish kids, and if you swap out trans or drag queen for Jews in how they are talking about this, it’s like 1933 Germany. I’m not saying we’re heading for another Holocaust, but I could see how something like that could happen again."

False accusations of pedophilia are "actually a really popular anti-semitic trope as well," according to Moore, that center around circumcision and a misinterpretation of Jewish beliefs about gender.

For Boggs and Bruce, the current climate in Ohio means they will be vigilant at Small Town Pride on Saturday. Performers and organizers have emergency plans in place.

"I am very strict with my people," Boggs said. "Don't approach protestors. Don’t engage them. We can counter-protest by being fabulous and amazing... I think people are acting out with fear. They aren’t taking the time to understand us and who we are as people."

He is gay but not transgender. He would never attempt to form a relationship with a child who attended a Pride event. He has strong support from his family. His nana bought him his first dress. And drag is an art form to him; a way to slip into the skin of someone he is not.

"Redd Velvet was made to be the opposite of who Kody is. I like to read. I like to keep quiet in a room," he said. Redd Velvet walks into a room and you immediately notice her. She demands your attention."

His goal at Small Town Pride is to make the people watching feel accepted.

"Being from a small town, I didn’t feel like I fit in anywhere. I didn’t feel like I had a safe place to free my rainbow flag and just be myself," Boggs said. "I want Celina Pride to be that, even if it’s just once a year."

Anna Staver is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio drag queens fight as violence increases