What officials learned from a referendum on drag queen storytimes in southwest Illinois
Madison County Board Chairman Kurt Prenzler thinks the Glen Carbon Centennial Library trustees should be replaced because the library offered a drag queen storytime event for families this summer.
He said the results of a referendum for voters in the library district showed that most residents don’t support children’s events involving drag queens. Prenzler led efforts to include the referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot.
It asked: “Shall tax-supported libraries and schools promote drag queen events to minors?” According to the unofficial results from Tuesday night, the vote was about 69% “no” to 31% “yes.”
“I think that what the library management did and what the trustees allowed was really not in sync with the community, and I think the vote reflected that,” Prenzler said Tuesday night.
Glen Carbon Library Director Christine Gerrish doesn’t see it that way. She’s focused on the 31%.
“That is a good portion of our population,” Gerrish said Tuesday as the results came in. “For them to see a question on the ballot that says ‘Should libraries and schools promote drag queens’ and then to say yes, that’s important. I don’t think that you would get that 10 years ago.”
Drag queens are entertainers who use makeup, wigs and fashion to take on a persona with exaggerated feminine characteristics. At storytimes, drag queens dress up and read storybooks to children and their families.
Gerrish said the library staff knew from the start that the event wasn’t going to appeal to everyone in the community. It was organized in June, which is Pride Month, when library directors say they want to offer programs featuring LGBTQ people so that anyone from the community who identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer sees themselves represented at their library.
Some opponents have argued they don’t want their property taxes to go toward organizing drag queen storytime events at public libraries.
Library directors have said in response that LGBTQ residents in the community pay taxes that support the libraries, too. They said attendance showed library patrons liked the drag queen events.
Glen Carbon library officials reported during a village board meeting that attendance at their drag queen storytime was triple the typical number of attendees for library programming. Gerrish said the library staff would be open to another drag queen event in the future.
“The best way that the public can tell us they don’t want something is to not show up,” she said.
Prenzler, a Republican, has said he thinks drag queens are inappropriate for children, and he wanted to get the referendum on the ballot to inform the community about these events.
On Tuesday, Prenzler said he expected the library trustees, who are elected, to have opposition when their terms end.
“I think there will certainly be people who want to get on the board and change the direction of the board,” he said.
Several protesters at Glen Carbon’s event repeated misinformation about drag queen storytimes that started on the fringes of the internet: baseless accusations that drag queens are “grooming” and “sexualizing” children. This rhetoric spread to the mainstream when some conservative politicians and commentators used it in an attempt to mobilize voters.
The legal definition of grooming is gaining a child’s confidence in order to sexually abuse them. Storytime critics say what they mean is that they fear drag queens will “groom” children for a future queer lifestyle, and they fear the events will include sexual content.
Drag queen shows for adults in nightclubs and bars can sometimes be risqué, but drag queen storytimes for children in local libraries are not. Each event is tailored to the audience.
“What I bring to a bar/nightclub on a Saturday night isn’t what I’m going to bring to a children’s storytime on a Sunday afternoon,” said Jacob Duniphan, who performs as a drag queen under the name Roxie Valentine. Duniphan is part of the leadership team of Metro East Pride.
Tim Bono, a Washington University psychologist, said young children are more likely to be interested in a drag queen’s colorful outfit or makeup than the performer’s gender or sexual orientation, which might not register to them at all.
But for older, LGBTQ youth, seeing a public institution bring someone like them into a leadership position as the reader at a storytime event can be reassuring and benefit their mental health in the long term, according to Bono.
This story was originally published November 9, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
