As someone who truly believes in the value of libraries and who in my earlier life, from primary school onwards, found both refuge from the world and a universe of knowledge within the walls of the library, this story is one that is difficult to write. It’s difficult to write because this story forces me to heap a great deal of opprobrium onto British libraries or rather what they’ve become. Slagging off libraries and librarians is not something that I really want to have to do but the involvement of dozens of British libraries in the Drag Queen Story Time phenomenon means that I must do so.

My parents and to a lesser extent my primary school used to let me have full access to both my local public and school libraries. My parents understood the value of learning and my father in particular had basically educated himself into being a top notch vehicle engineer using libraries and night school, as his early education had been severely disrupted by being evacuated during World War II. My primary school, despite being decimated by the type of progressive Plowdenism that treated stuff like grammar as a hindrance to expression, had enough understanding of how children learn to let me read avidly, as much as I wanted, greedily imbibing knowledge from within the school library. Libraries were where I learned about politics, science, art and much else.

My parents could trust me in both the school library and the public library as they could trust that the librarians would not allow me to take out or read stuff that would be age inappropriate. They could also trust the librarians to ensure that displays and events at the library and especially in the children’s library section, would also be suitable for children.

I don’t have the same trust in librarians and libraries today with regards my own child that my parents and their generation did with their librarians. This is because I cannot be sure that what the library service considers as age appropriate matches with what parents might consider as being age appropriate, or even if the library has decided that they are going to depart from concepts like truth, impartiality and viewpoint diversity which I believe should be important in library work.

It is quite possible these days that a local children’s library might contain books encouraging children to climb aboard the bandwagon of the cult of trans and thereby set themselves on the path to one of the NHS gender slaughterhouses, where children are mutilated and medicalised. I also can’t be sure that history books aimed at children within these libraries contain real history or just politicised bastardised pseudo-history or that the library service has decided to promote materials that place ideology above truth.

A very good example of how far have Britain’s libraries and especially Britain’s children’s libraries have fallen comes from this site that is published by the group that runs ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ sessions in Britain’s libraries. Whilst I agree that having readers dressing as characters from children’s books can help some children engage more with reading, I fail to see what actual benefit comes from having men dressed up as caricatures of women reading to small children.

The only reasoning that I can see behind it is to normalise for children the idea of cross dressing or to induct them at very early ages into the cults of gender and transgender. These libraries, a list of which I have copied below, could have chosen to promote reading in a myriad of different ways other than this one. They could have had a professional story teller read a book and arrange a library treasure hunt based on the book, or had some other fun reading related games or any one of the many ways that otherwise reluctant readers could be encouraged to read. There is no need as I see it to put drag queens, who are to all intents and purposes adult entertainers best suited for an adult environment, in front of small children. In fact it’s more than inappropriate to do so. I’ve no problem with drag or even drag acts with highly sexual content in pubs and clubs that cater for adults or even the very much less sexualised old style of female impersonator such as Danny La Rue, in fact I regularly used to watch such shows myself. But to expose children to the sort of politicised and ideological drag that is all too common these days is utterly wrong. Small children are little sponges when it comes to information and a great deal of damage could be done to these children by presenting them with drag queens who are more than likely promoting gender-cult focused ‘children’s stories.

I believe that this promotion of Drag Queen Story Hour in children’s libraries up and down the country looks like a political act by libraries and by some librarians, rather than an genuine attempt to encourage children to read. It also shows that too many of our libraries are more interested in promoting the latest, morality free fad or trend than they are in ensuring that a totality of knowledge, unfettered by ideology, is available to the public.

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Here’s the list from the Drag Queen Story Hour website of the libraries that are holding these Drag Queen events aimed at children. I’m putting this up here so that parents are aware of what libraries and in what areas these disgraceful events are being held in order that they can keep their children away from them or to politely and legally complain to the relevant library services about this series of events. I’ve also put this list up so people in general and parents in particular can be informed as to what is going on with these awful drag queen story hour events should the organisers try, at some point in the future, to hide what they are doing from parents and the general public.

This tour has 4 events within Reading Libraries. These events are across 2 days.
• Reading Central Library @ 10:30, 25/07/2022
• Tilehurst Library @ 14:00, 25/07/2022
• Whitley Library @ 10:30, 26/07/2022
• Southcote Library @ 14:00, 26/07/2022