Huntington Woods has been targeted by an anti-LGBTQ group over their library's Drag Queen Storytime for children.
The program started last year as a way to provide children with queer role models. It was so popular it overflowed its original room at the library and is being held off-site. Now, an anti-LGBTQ group from Massachusetts is trying to stop storytime with a phone and email campaign.
Amy Sullivan is the Huntington Woods City Manager. "Any phone calls that I have received that are not supportive of the program have either been from out of state or as far away as Grand Rapids. Nobody from Huntington Woods has contacted me based on the Mass Resistance initiative," says Sullivan.
One of the city commissioners, Allison Iverson, plans to speak in opposition to Drag Queen Storytime at the Tuesday's commission meeting. She has opposed the program since it was started in 2017. Now, an out-of-state group called Mass Resistance has thrown its support behind her with an email and phone campaign targeting city and library officials.
The emails characterize the program as "adult, perverse entertainment" and refer to the drag queens as sexual predators bent on brainwashing innocent children.
Sullivan says that Iverson will speak during an open comment period at the end of the meeting, but there are no plans for any vote on the program, and the library has no intention of canceling it.
*Clarification: This article has been updated. An earlier version of this story characterized MassResistance as a "hate group" due to their designation as such by the Southern Poverty Law Center. We have changed it to "Anti-LGBTQ" in order to be more clear in the characterization of MassResistance.
