David Worley, a former Pocatello mayoral candidate, says Marshall Public Library officials in the southeastern Idaho town are to the left of left-wing in terms of content. So when it was discovered that the library was hosting a drag queen show for all ages, he got the word out to local MassResistance Christians, who flooded the zone about 30 minutes before the February 11th event.
The initial plan was to sing hymns so that the drag queens and the attendees in the main meeting room could hear them. If the police were called to force them to leave, then the team planned to go outside, stand around the library near the windows, and sing. But as the event came closer, they had the idea to go into the meeting room early and take up all the seats.
All of the activists showed up with Bibles in their hands and planned to read the Bible through the whole event. The library director saw what was going on and told the crowd, "If you are not here to participate, then you need to leave." No one did.
"It's a public event at a public venue that's owned by the city, so they can't tell anyone they can't come," Worley points out. "We just show up, fill up all the seats so the room's at max capacity, and then prevent young children from being brought in and being exposed to this sexually inappropriate content."
The tactic worked, as he accounts there was no room for children. As the event was about to begin, the director came back and asked some of the activists to give up their seats so that the parents with children in the lobby could come inside. No one budged, so the drag queen read LGBT stories like "Two Grooms on a Cake" to the adults for about 30 minutes before ending the program early.
After the event, Worley says they planned to let the board know they did not appreciate the fact that the library has several hundred inappropriate books available to children and young people.
"I think they really wanted to ignore us," he tells AFN. "We did go to the library's board meeting, and we wanted to question them and make sure that banners to this stuff was in the library, so if they weren't aware … we had the examples, we had the books. And then [we] petitioned them to force the library director to get this smut out of the library and also to quit hosting these inappropriate events."
The board abruptly ended its meeting, but a MassResistance believes the library staff received the message, as a pro-LGBT book display in the center of the library has since been removed.
