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A Woman Crashed Drag Queen Story Hour & Called It a 'Perversion'
The woman disrupted an event at a bookstore in Riverside, Calif., where she spouted antigay rhetoric in front of the kids who were there.
A virulently antigay woman crashed Drag Queen Story Hour at the Cellar Door Bookstore in Riverside, Calif. this weekend where she spouted anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in front of the kids gathered to hear Halloween stories, according to KMIR-TV, a local NBC affiliate.
“This is about saying ‘You know what, this is a perverse lifestyle and if you choose it, it’s your business,’” the woman, Genevieve Peters, said about why she refused to leave the event where children were gathered, even when a security guard approached her. “But we as Americans can choose not to agree with it.”
Video captured of Peters’s tirade during the event caught her denigrating LGBTQ people.
“She has invited the public to watch this perversion with these homosexuals,” Peters, a Los Angeles resident, said about the Cellar Door owner Linda Sherman-Nurick. “I’m sorry this is what’s happening.”
Following a trend that’s been popping up in cities around the country, Sherman-Nurick booked the ever-popular Drag Queen Story Hour.
“Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) is just what it sounds like—drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores,” reads the Drag Queen Story Hour website.
During the event, Sherman-Nurick noticed that Peters was recording the crowd and asked her to stop filming children.
At that point, Peters began a tirade about Sherman-Nurick bringing “perversion” to the community of Riverside, which is an hour-plus drive from Los Angeles.
“That’s what you get,” Peters said about filming kids. “This is our nation’s children, you have no right to tell us about our children.”
“For the last 30 years, the homosexual agenda has been first and foremost wanting to desensitize our communities, our children, our families,” Peters said.
The event at the Cellar Door was not the first time an anti-LGBTQ crusader has disrupted Drag Queen Story Hour. Early this summer self-proclaimed pastor David Grisham burst into an event in Anchorage, Alaska, spouting hateful comments about transgender people.
In August, members of the group Warriors for Christ and Special Forces of Liberty sued Louisiana to halt Drag Queen Story Hour in that state.
Peters’s hateful comments were not new for Jovani Morales, a drag queen involved with the event. He pointed out the hypocrisy in Peters’s attempt to police what children are exposed to.
“I’m used to this negativity and hate,” Morales said. “They’re screaming hateful things and negative comments that kids shouldn’t be hearing, to begin with.”
But Sherman-Nurick won’t be swayed. She intends to continue booking events like Drag Queen Story Hour. She said she hopes “the generation that comes up will not have these kinds of fears, hatred, and ugliness.”
Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for the Advocate Channel. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.
Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP, Executive Producer of Entertainment for the Advocate Channel. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.
