Oliver H/Insider
- Proud Boys protested Drag Story Hours on 18 occasions across the US last year, new data shows.
- 'Oliver H,' a NYC drag king, read to 50 kids during 2022's 'terrifying' but joyful final protest.
- 'It sounded like a parade,' he said of 200 singing, rainbow-clad allies who drowned out the protesters.
"Oliver H," a New York City drag king with a self-described, rainbow-colored "mohawk to the sky," has read to kids at dozens of Drag Story Hour events, many of which spurred protests.
But he knew he'd better add extra flowers when he painted on his beard for his December 29 reading at a public library in Queens.
Outside the library, some three-dozen Proud Boys, neo-Nazis, and religious activists were shouting "groomer!" And more than 200 rainbow-clad counter-protesters were banging drums and singing Lady Gaga's "Born This Way."
"I was like, you know what? This is going to be a crazy day," Oliver H, 23, told himself, as he worked to paint his makeup especially bright.
"I wanted to have a very colorful face the kids could focus on," the former daycare teacher told Insider, "instead of on everything else that was happening."
Jason Fulgoni for Insider
Across the country, a Proud Boys war on drag — and drag story hours in particular— has fueled record-high numbers of anti-LGBTQ+ protests, new data shows. The extremist group is showing up at roughly half of all anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The passionate protest at the Queens Public Library in Jackson Heights was the last of 18 drag story hours the Proud Boys targeted in 2022, and one of the year's most tense, with police deploying mace to keep the opposing sides apart. Authorities made one arrest, according to news accounts.
"We had Zoom meetings beforehand about safety measures," Oliver H told Insider of his local chapter of Drag Story Hour, a national program that for seven years has promoted these voluntary celebrations of diversity and literacy at public libraries and schools.
"But nothing could have prepared me for the grand scale of how much was happening."
Days earlier, the hometown congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had rallied her supporters on Instagram: Go to the reading in force, the Queens Democrat urged, and "Defend Drag Story Hour in NYC!"
Her high-profile post tipped off protesters. But it also super-charged a network of story hour "defenders."
These included The People's Bus, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, and the "Parasol Patrol" — counter-demonstrators who deploy big rainbow umbrellas and ridiculously loud singing to shield children and parents from homophobic shouting and signage.
As Oliver H was getting ready, there were enemy infiltrations on both sides.
"We had found a flyer that was circulating on the far right, saying that they were going to meet at a Dunkin Donuts ahead of time, nearby. Which was very bone chilling to say the least," the performer said.
"And we had people who were trying to look, I guess, a little less visibly queer that were at that Dunkin Donuts to see what was going on."
The opposing camp had spies attending the reading — children in tow.
"They were there with their children, and the father was very drunk," Oliver H said.
"They were very 'anti' us. So we were keeping an eye on them."
Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images
Outside, video of the event shows at least eight men in Proud Boys regalia standing with other protesters on the sidewalk across from the library.
One holds a black flag with the group's emblem. Others hold signs reading, "If you won't fight for your kids we will!" and, "Why must they/them sexualize children?"
"Send the groomers home!" shouted a Proud Boy holding a sign reading, "Groom dogs, not kids."
The counter-protesters beat drums and sang along to amplified Gaga and Disney songs — the latter intentionally chosen so images posted online would quickly be taken down "for copyright issues."
"On one side of the street, I saw signs calling me a groomer," Oliver H remembered recently.
"On the other side of the street, they were singing 'High School Musical.' Each side of the street was so different."
Inside the library, 50 young children, and their adult loved ones — including the apparent infiltrator family — could hear all of the singing, and none of the homophobic slurs.
"The singing drowned out the shouting," remembered Oliver H, who performs at adults-only venues under a far more risque name, "Oliver Herface."
"The kids just thought there was a fun parade."
He read the children's books, "We Don't eat Our Classmates," and "Don't Touch My Hair."
He also read "'Twas the Night Before Pride," about the Stonewall uprising, the 1969 protest at a Greenwich Village gay bar that catalyzed America's gay rights movement.
"It felt very meta, reading that story while everything was going on outside," Oliver H said.
"It kind of made me feel like I was in a storybook myself."
The infiltrator family, the father of which was suspected of being "visibly drunk," was not impressed.
"The only thing they had to say afterwards was that it was boring," Oliver H said.
"I'm like, yeah, well if they expect me to uphold their backward rhetoric of what happens at a drag story hour, then yeah, me just reading a story to children is going to seem boring."
For Oliver H, though, it wasn't dull at all.
"The energy in the room was wonderful," he said.