Drag Queen Story Hour stirs Missouri lawmaker to support limits on library programming

Public libraries that display “age-inappropriate material” could lose state funding and even see their librarians fined or jailed, under a bill proposed by a Missouri lawmaker.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Ben Baker, a southwest Missouri Republican, said Thursday that the “Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act” did not target books but was drafted in reaction to Drag Queen Story Hours being held across the state.

“In some places -- St. Louis, Kansas City and I think St. (Joseph) -- they’ve had these drag queen story hours and that’s something that I take objection to and I think a lot of parents do,” Baker, R-Neosho, said. “That’s where in a public space, our kids could be exposed to something that’s age-inappropriate. That’s what I’m trying to tackle.”

The first Drag Queen Story Hour was held in San Francisco in 2015. Since then the events, meant to give kids “glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models,” according to a website that tracks them, have spread across the nation through public libraries, museums and bookstores.

Though not all drag queens are gay or transgender, the events have become a kind of barometer for a community’s tolerance of expressing queer identities in public.

While the Kansas City Public Library has not held Drag Queen Story Hours, they have been held as ticketed events at area theaters and museums.

The St. Louis Public Library’s Drag Queen Storytime is one of its most popular events. Biannually, hundreds attend, with few protesters.

The St. Joseph Public Library’s first story time drew 500 people, with police stationed outside to monitor protesters and counter protesters. A Catholic group, America Needs Fatima, which protests drag queen story hours around the Midwest, shuttled in protesters from as far away as Topeka to pray the rosary for attendees.

The bill would give parents “recourse” to say they were “not OK” with the programming introduced into their community, Baker said. It requires each library district to create five-person oversight board of adults that would hold public hearings and make final decisions on whether “material” was age-inappropriate.

Inappropriate “material” would then be moved so it could not be accessed by minors.

Librarians who refused to do so could be convicted of a class B misdemeanor, and be required to pay a $500 fine and be sentenced up to a year in jail.

Baker insisted he intended the bill to be about programming and not books. The language of the bill required work, he added.

“If we were trying to ban books or censor literature, I would kill the bill, myself,” Baker said.

A young child seeing a drag queen could instigate a conversation about “adult themes” that parents are not ready to have with their children, Baker said.

“Some of those events are open from ages 1 to teen years,” Baker said. “I don’t think a 2-, 3-, 4-year-old is prepared to grapple with those ideas and I don’t think they should be subjected to that just by walking through the library.”

Baker took it one step further by alleging the story hours to be a public safety issue, saying they have “drawn child predators, pedophiles” in the past.

The Houston Public Library received national attention when a drag queen who read at two of its story time events was later revealed to be a registered child sex offender. The library later apologized for not conducting a background check of the volunteer, as required by their policies.

There are few other public reports of such situations.

Crosby Kemper III, Kansas City Public Library’s outgoing executive director, said drag queen story hours have become “a big national issue.” Kemper was appointed by President Donald Trump as the director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and will begin his new job at the federal agency next week.

“One thing I’ve said to other librarians are libraries are pretty good about understanding their communities,” Kemper said.

“I think there are communities where doing a drag queen story time is throwing something in people’s faces, a deliberate provocation,” he added. “There are other places that people find it amusing or friendly or whatever. Communities have a different sense of what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate.”

Any issue about programming and books should “begin with a conversation,” Kemper said.

“Librarians are trained to pick books that are important to their communities,” Kemper said. “If there is something inappropriate then parents should go to the librarians and have a discussion about that, rather than... mandates through state funding.”

Public libraries already have oversight through a board of trustees elected or appointed by the community, Cynthia Dudenhoffer, the Missouri Library Association president, said. The association has come out against the bill, decrying it as “censorship.”

“I’m sure any library board and their director take the responses from their community very, very seriously,” Dudenhoffer said.

PROMO Missouri, the state’s largest gay rights advocacy organization, was “disappointed” Baker was “attempting to restrict the very thing libraries do best,” its communication manager Shira Berkowitz said.

“Libraries have long been a safe place for everyone to learn, a place that promotes acceptance and challenges us to accept new ideas,” Berkowitz said.

LGBT visibility helps children cultivate a positive self-image, as well, she said.

“Especially in a state where lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people can still be denied housing, fired from their jobs and denied public service, it’s really important to have these safe spaces where children and families can come into the visibility of LGBT people or queerness, or playfulness in their identities, whether that be through literature or the performative nature of drag culture,” Berkowitz said.

Though Baker’s bill has received national headlines, it has not yet been referred to a committee.

It will most likely not this legislative session, according to another southwest Missouri lawmaker, state Sen. Bill White. White represents Baker’s district.

“It will have a very difficult time going through in its current fashion, in its current drafting,” White, R-Joplin, said.

White said though he has not read the bill, he doesn’t plan on supporting it.

“I do not believe in banning books — you have parental control,” White said. “I do not believe in having boards that become the decider in what is free speech and what is part of free speech for libraries and artistic expression.”

This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 7:26 PM.