Dozens of protesters physically blocked the entrance to the San Fernando Library this week to stop a scheduled drag storytime reading event from taking place.
Videos posted on social media showed a group of about 70 people — some of whom had previously attended similar demonstrations in North Hollywood, Glendale, and elsewhere — wearing black-and-white shirts reading, “Leave our kids alone.” They chanted the same slogan through bullhorns while hurling verbal abuse and slurs at the guest reader.
Story hours, during which drag queens read to children at venues such as libraries, schools and bookstores, have drawn fury and condemnation from conservatives and right-wing extremists across the country. Some events have been the subject of anti-LGBTQ+ threats and at times violent confrontations.
Wednesday’s scheduled 30-minute event, which organizers said was intended to promote youth literacy, never took place.
“What was meant to be a celebration of love and inclusion turned into the opposite,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, the event’s host, said in a statement Thursday….
Horvath’s staff said in an email that the supervisor, who was inside the library, did not officially cancel the event. But it did not proceed because demonstrators “blockaded” entrances — denying entry to both library patrons and drag queen Pickle, the guest reader.
Pickle, Los Angeles chapter president of the nonprofit Drag Story Hour, said she parked blocks away from the library “for safety reasons,” anticipating some hostility.
Video footage showed that San Fernando police officers encircled Pickle near the rear entrance. The phalanx moved toward a metal gate but stopped short as some protesters screamed “pervert,” “pedophile” and “disgusting freak” at Pickle.
About six to eight protesters refused to leave the entrance even after police issued a dispersal order, according to Pickle. The San Fernando Police Department did not confirm or deny whether such an order had been given.
The drag performer said she and the police then attempted to move to the front entrance. As they walked, protesters blared car horns, refused to move and positioned nearby tables to block the front entryway, she said.
“At this point, the police weren’t making arrests, they weren’t stopping the mob and they were allowing an unelected group of people to determine who could and who could not access a public building,” Pickle said. “Shame on the San Fernando police….”
San Fernando Police Lt. Pete Aguirre said 10 officers were deployed to the library.
Aguirre said no arrests were made and no assaults or property damage were reported.
Aguirre said protesters began arriving at 10:30 a.m., with most staying until the event was terminated at noon. Others didn’t leave for another hour and engaged with a “small contingent of counter protesters.”
“We weren’t able to get to the venue, but we ensured that the performer was not assaulted in any way and that they were able to leave the venue unharmed,” Aguirre said.
From L.A. Times
“What was meant to be a celebration of love and inclusion turned into the opposite” when police arrested a “Sister” of Perpetual Indulgence for exposing himself to children at a northern California beach. Or, when female students and their parents objected to biological males exposing themselves in their locker rooms. Men in drag must be permitted to influence young children or you’re a hater. Remember, perverse sexual behavior is love and must be included, even/especially for children, and we must all celebrate it and bend our knees to it.
How can you call yourselves Catholic when you preach hare rather than love and acceptance as the Holy Father teaches? You sound like fascists rather than Roman Catholics.
We don’t have to love and accept despicable evils. We must oppose them. We’re doing it for the children.
Mike, what is loving about a man in drag influencing young children? I hate no one. I love and accept children and this man, for whom Christ died. That doesn’t mean we need to expose children to his dangerous delusion. Do you agree with the teachings of Christ and the Church about sex belonging only in marriage? I love and accept people, but not all behaviors. How does that make me a fascist?
Your ignorance and poor reasoning of the faith shows in your post , love and acceptance of things contrary to the faith is to be resisted , the accusation of fascism shows how desperate you are to defend the indefensible, without a true grasp of what fascism truly is .
Sounds like you love Satan and his works of Evil– sex pervert males dressed as Drag Queens, harming and corrupting innocent little children. Good Christian men who love God, are strong, masculine and virile, and they protect children from all Evil. They vehemently condemn Sin and Evil, for love of God– and they run all evildoers out of town, and keep their town safe. Read the Bible– find out how strong, holy, deeply committed Biblical Jewish and early Christian men lived. They were not psycho-babbling wimps. Christ was stern about sin. He would probably take a whip, overturn the librarians’ “money changer” library bookshelves, full of sex pervert books for kids— and drive that Drag Queen flat out of town.
Every single father in that picture is an emasculated, feminized, girly-man, and their children will grow up to have issues because their fathers weren’t masculine. A man would flat-out refuse to allow his child to attend such an event. Every mother in that picture is a left-wing nutjob, especially the one with the blue hair, which is always a dead giveaway.
Those children are being sacrificed to Molech.
We scorn the Aztecs for their practice of human sacrifice. Our society is hardly better.
This is sick and twisted.
Poor Pickle must have left in a sour mood.
It’s understandable that the Drag Queens are perverts. But more are the perverts of the County Supervisors, Library Boards, parents and all other “adults” allowing and supporting this. God help our poor children.
The above is in response to the hate based article, not Sara Kastik’s post.
The article is from the Los Angeles Times. They’re not Catholic and I’m not certain they’re fascist either.
Yeah, this LA Times article refers to the protestors as “right-wing extremists;” but not to the “nonprofit Drag Story Hour” movement as “left-wing extremists.”
This LA Times article refers to Pickle as “she” and “her,” and let him run his mouth off; but did not interview a single protestor. That’s “balance” for you.
Time to cancel your LA Times subscription.
They’re not fooling anyone. Cat’s out of the bag. Narrative protectors in the media and screwball politicians are the only people that think everyone shares their delusions.
Good. Get in their faces and disrupt. It’s cultural war. They are pushing drag queens on children while tearing down posters of kidnapped Israelis. You decide who’s on the side of goodness.
Why are you referring to that pickle dude as a female when you know it’s a lie? You’re either 💯 Catholic or you’re not Catholic at all.
😍😇🤗😎
Good for those protesters. I guess all of California hasn’t gone crazy. God be with those poor little children whose ignorant parents brought them to learn about perversion and sin.
Pickle is consigned to the barrel.
They all should be stopped. This isn’t Tootsie or Mrs. Doubtfire. This isn’t for comedy where everyone gets the joke that men are pretending to be women and have a good laugh over the incongruity of a man in women’s clothes. This is men seriously trying to be women, which is a perversion, and — what’s worse — it’s teaching kids that this is something admirable.
November 1 is all saints day. I guarantee you that there are no drag queen or transgender saints. If any of them made it to purgatory, they will be cleansed of those drag and trans impurities and defilements to be the men or women God made them to be. St. Peter is very thorough at vetting who gets through the pearly gates, and drag queens or men who have chopped off their junk don’t make it.
Pickle is not trans.
St. Peter is thorough, none of that is the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Good for these dedicated parents who held this big protest. Drag Queens and the LGBT culture and “lifestyle” should be vehemently denounced from every church pulpit in America– Catholic and Protestant. We need good, sensible laws to put an end to all of these evils, and protect children and families.
I just ask myself, “Why? Why is it necessary to sponsor a “Drag Story Hour” at a public library?” I think parents who subject their children to this perversion are certainly ignorant of the Truth. Those who promote this “grooming” of minors are at best, ignorant, at worst, evil. As Catholics and Christians, we are sent to the preach the Gospel in love. Jesus himself talked with sinners, yet after forgiving their sins, He always told them to, “Go, and sin no more.”
They want to infect children with their pernicious, woke mind virus so that kids will consider gay and trans as normal and maybe even desire to be gay or trans themselves. The “born this way” claim is a bunch of horse pucky. People identify as gay or trans due to relationship trauma, psychological or sexual abuse, or encouragement, such as through drag queen story hours and children’s TV and movies that are normalizing sexual deviancy.
The Texas Rangers won the World Series. The Rangers are the only MLB team that didn’t host a gay pride night. Ya think there’s a connection? 😏💯
“The Texas Rangers won the World Series. The Rangers are the only MLB team that didn’t host a gay pride night. Ya think there’s a connection?”
to think – there are some people who
would label the above reasonable comment
as hate speech
sheesh!
Haywood T. Speech: It’s just the truth.
Texas Rangers blessed: It’s their first World Series Championship so they lost their virginity.
Why would a man in drag choose the name “Pickle.” Oh… I get it now.
It is a man in a costume. If it freaks you out, don’t go.
it is hard to believe that it is a sin to sing and dance and do comedy dressed as the opposite sex.
Why would it be?
The Church has never said that.
With all the really dirty performers out there these days, you think God is offended by this?
“With all the really dirty performers out there these days, you think God is offended by this?” Yes, highly offended. Read II Peter 2. Ask yourself if these men believe in sexual purity, in honoring God and helping form these children in virtue.
How would you know unless you contacted them?
The values that are being taught are self-acceptance, compassion, love, joy, and humor.
Do the people blocking the door believe in sexual purity, in honoring God and helping form children in virtue?
We would have to contact them, too.
How about the librarian?
What about the parents?
This particular performer is a singer who plays with a 11 piece orchestra. I have not seen a performance so I do not know if there is anything bawdy in it.
Obviously, even if there was, they would not do that with a group of children. They are background checked. All the children have parents there with them.
I imagine that you are projecting onto this person in a way that the Lord does not approve of.
I read 2 Peter 2 and it does not really apply unless you assume that this person, because he is a drag performer, he is also immoral.
That is not an assumption that you should make.
If they can do this to a drag queen, then they can do this to you.
Um, I’m not a twisted pervert like Pickle is. 🤨
Are you claimed for Christ?
“Protesters claimed they want to keep children safe while pounding on walls, shouting obscenities and slurs toward my staff and library staff, and using strollers to blockade moving vehicles. The hypocrisy is astounding,” Horvath said.
CCD left out this paragraph
When I heard Notre Dame was having a drag show, I thought it was inappropriate and weird but now I get it.
Catholics are not fundamentalists.
We look to the Church for our moral teaching.
If the Church hasn’t taught anything, we use our conscience.
If it bothers your conscience to attend a drag show, then you should not go.
You can tell others how you think and feel about it, but you do not have the authority to forbid them. That is left to their conscience.
I have some really old Catholic books where people are advised to avoid all secular entertainment-dances were considered especially bad.
Some of us remember having mixers or dances at Catholic schools.
My son attended a Christian school where they did not have prom.
Fundamentalists, without the guidance of the Church, again, use their own conscience.