Nelson Public Library is now speaking out about the week-long campaign that saw a story time featuring a drag performer reading stories to kids cancelled, following threats that made the administration fear for staff and participant safety.<\/p>\n
It was after announcing the event on social media that a campaign rife with homophobia and misinformation ignited the rage in comment sections around the West Kootenay region. The campaign appears to have been influenced by a video posted by a local woman who falsely claimed the event went against the Criminal Code and library policies by entertaining a sexually charged environment geared toward children, encouraging locals to contact the library.<\/p>\n
The cancellation follows a trend of threats and attacks against similar drag-themed performances in public venues in recent years, driven by frequent claims of the LGBTQ-movement using the performances as a way to groom minors.<\/p>\n
The news of the cancellation and hate campaign also triggered protests locally. An alternate story time and protest is being organized outside city hall at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday.<\/p>\n
LISTEN: \"We stand with the library staff\" \u2013 Nelson Library administration speaks out about hate campaign against drag story time:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nelson Public Library is now speaking out about the week-long campaign that saw a story time featuring a drag performer reading stories to kids cancelled, following threats that made the administration fear for staff and participant safety. It was after announcing the event on social media that a campaign rife with homophobia and misinformation ignited…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":143702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[217,57,221],"tags":[24220,3012,7430,24061,24221],"radio":[1420],"origine":[280,2165,231],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144249"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144285,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144249\/revisions\/144285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144249"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=144249"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=144249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}