Drag queen story hour branded ‘vulgar’ as it’s cut from city’s Pride line-up
Drag queen Jadein Black (Instagram/jadeinblack1)
A city council in Michigan has voted to cut a drag queen story hour from its Pride festival line-up.
The council for Madison Heights called a special meeting on 1 June to discuss whether or not it would be appropriate to host the drag queen story time event at a local park. According to WXYZ, the meeting saw some council members call the event “vulgar” and “overtly sexual”.
The story time was originally set to be part of the town’s Arts and Pride Festival line-up at Civic Center Park on 7 June. The council ultimately voted 4-3 to cancel the event.
Jennifer Nagle, a member of the Madison Heights Arts Board and the Arts and Pride Planning Committee, said that the board had been planning the festival for five months.
She also shared that the booked drag performer had been carefully vetted, and that no one on the council raised concerns about them in the lead-up to the event.
Nagle said that every element had been pre-approved, including the book the queen was going to read and the outfit they were set to wear, which featured a dress that highlighted autism awareness.
“This was the first year we had the budget to book a drag performer and this was apparently far too much for some people,” she said.
The drag performer in question was Jadein Black, a K-12 teacher who often performs at family-friendly reading events like the story hour.
Following the news, Black took to Instagram to attempt to find a new venue so they could still help the children of Madison Heights mark this year’s Pride.
“Let me be clear: Drag performers are not groomers,” Black wrote. “We are educators, neighbors, friends, community members, and human beings. We show up to create spaces where children can learn about kindness, literacy, acceptance, and self-expression.”
Speaking to WXYZ, Black said of the last-minute cancellation: “I feel like my drag is my armour. And I feel like all of these people really don’t understand or have even been to an experience with myself or any other drag queens before, so it hurts really bad.”
Rae Stoloff, a volunteer for the Pride festival, told the outlet that they tried to push back against claims that hosting a drag queen story hour would be inappropriate.
“To me, this is no different than having a magician come in. You have a magician that performs one way for kids and one way for adults,” Stoloff said.
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