In April, Drag Queen Story Hour was announced. Protests erupted, and by September, the library was forced to close. It still hasn’t reopened.
Lake Luzerne, in upstate New York, is a small mountain town of weathered clapboard houses, with a spired church on Main Street and a public library that offered internet access, a food pantry and twice-weekly story hours for children.
Last April, the library announced a one-time addition to its children’s lineup: Drag Queen Story Hour.
“We knew it would probably be controversial,” recalled Amanda Hoffman, who was the library’s director of youth services. “We didn’t expect it to be what it became.”
Over the coming months, someone called in a bomb threat to the library, a board meeting ended in punches being thrown and the library itself became so tense that Ms. Hoffman was hospitalized with stress-induced vertigo. Neighbors denounced one another as “fascists” or “predators” and complained of being doxxed, threatened and harassed.
The library never held a Drag Queen Story Hour.
Finally, this fall, most of the library’s staff and trustees quit, forcing it to shut down. After 53 years of operation, the library — named for the adjacent Rockwell Falls — has not lent a book since Sept. 26.
Neighbors who grew up together have been left wondering how their quiet rural town of 1,400, about an hour’s drive north of Albany, became a battleground for a nationally polarizing debate over issues of inclusion, free speech and the role of tax-funded institutions.
"story" - Google News
January 04, 2024 at 11:52PM
https://ift.tt/SxtsDdK
How a Drag Queen Event That Never Happened Forced a Library to Shut Down - The New York Times
"story" - Google News
https://ift.tt/63XlwK1
https://ift.tt/BNb5fP9
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "How a Drag Queen Event That Never Happened Forced a Library to Shut Down - The New York Times"
Post a Comment