Community members are pushing back against hateful rhetoric targeting Children’s Book Cellar, a locally owned bookstore in Waterville, which in partnership with Central Maine Pride is holding a Drag Story Hour intended to celebrate gender diversity in the state.
Elizabeth Leonard, who’s been a Waterville resident for over 30 years and often brought her own kids to Children’s Book Cellar, is organizing a rally on June 1, hoping to drown out a protest of the inclusive story hour by anti-LGBTQ activists, who say it’s a form of “indoctrination.”
Currently the pro-bookstore event has eight times as many planned attendees on Facebook.
“My own kids had a variety of role models in their regular lives to figure out who they were,” Leonard told Beacon. “I think they would be delighted to know now that this story hour is happening in Waterville, even though they don’t live here anymore, and would certainly come out in support.”
Drag Queen Story Hour was first established in 2015 by San Francisco author Michelle Tea, who organized the event after noticing the lack of diverse readers at the story times she brought her son to.
Designed to show children that sexuality and gender expression are not necessarily set in stone, hundreds of Drag Story Hours have taken place across the country, including one held in Portland in 2017, one in Lewiston in 2018, and another scheduled for June 1 in South Portland.
Support for the Waterville event grew after the town’s mayor, Nick Isgro, who has a history of bigoted statements and social media posts, claimed the story hour is an attempt at “scandalizing the children in our community.”
“I know young children who already know they’re different than what they see. I have a good friend who has a child who is transgender,” said Hilary Koch on Facebook. “When we don’t talk about things openly, if children aren’t given the opportunity to meet people who are different than they are, or in fact, the same as they are, then it’s easy to for children (or adults) to think who they are is ‘wrong.’”
“My only issue with story time is that it’s always in the middle of the day in the middle of the week,” Dorothea LaBrie-Sites commented on the Portland Press Herald article about the Children’s Book Cellar event. “Us working moms need weekend drag queen story time!”
Leonard hopes the attention the story hour has received will remain focused on the reading itself, not on the protest or even her supportive rally. Although the rally is called a counter-protest on its Facebook event page, Leonard said she would characterize it as a celebration of what the store is doing.
“I wasn’t thinking I was creating an event that would compete with the story time,” she said. “It would just be to protect this store that has meant so much to so many of us. It’s about us saying, ‘This is a welcoming environment. We’re here to make sure it remains a welcoming environment,’ and making sure that people don’t feel scared away.”
When asked if she thinks critics of the story time represent the majority of Waterville residents, Leonard said that while the opposition is vocal, she doesn’t think their opinions align with the majority.
“People who are indifferent or are supportive of the store are probably in the majority, but I think it’s easy to not want to offend and not want to stir-up trouble, especially in such a small town,” Leonard explained.
But, she continued, “we need to be more vocal and take the time to express ourselves, because that’s the best way to challenge hate speech. It’s to say, rather than think, ‘Well, hey, I don’t see it that way.’”
(Photo via Creative Commons/Flickr user Lydia Liu)
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