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“Miss Richfield 1981” at “Stories together with Drag Queens” in 2018 Miss Richfield 1981 website

RICHFIELD, Minnesota, October 2, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — A public library in the Midwest has invited a drag queen known for his adult entertainment show titled “Gender Fluids” to read to toddlers during its Saturday story hour on multiple occasions. 

Billing himself as “Miss Richfield 1981,” Russ King is a drag artist who has previously been photographed in a sacrilegious pose, spread eagle on top of what looks like an altar beneath a large cross at St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco.  

King’s website and Facebook page display many disturbing photos of him dressed in garish clothing in exaggerated feminine poses, sometimes with nearly naked or naked men.    

The Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) events took place at Richfield, Minnesota’s Augsburg Park Library, located in Hennepin County. Richfield is Russ King’s hometown where his drag queen persona was launched, although his 20-plus-year career performing as Miss Richfield 1981 has led him far away to regular gigs in gay meccas on both coasts: Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Palm Springs, California. He has also appeared on national television and has been a spokesman in Orbitz commercials.

Citizen journalist and activist Peggy Traeger Tierney, who attended King’s most recent appearance at the Augsburg Park Library, reported:

Russ (King) was wearing a very short skirt and very high heels, and when he bent over, or his legs spread apart, he revealed his underwear to a dozen toddlers who sat before him. Children between eight months and 13 years were there. Russ ended Story Hour with a vocal rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which he belted out in his deep baritone voice.

I went to the Drag Queen Story Hour event, by myself, to observe. I live a mile from the library. This is my neighborhood. I grew up here and still live here. Drag Queen Story Hour was organized by the Richfield Library (Augsburg Park location) Youth Services Librarian named Alison Reiter, who approached me upon arrival, after I identified myself through my library card, and told me “everybody knows who you are” and they were watching me. I was quickly surrounded, and monitored, by several members of the “Richfield Social Justice Community” (RSJC) — three large women who served as bouncers for the event. In other words, the library used my private information to “dox” me to the activists.

Tierney explained that both books the drag queen King read to the young children were LGBT-oriented: Neither explained how some people are neither a boy or a girl and are called “this or that or they,” and Rainbow was used by King to teach the kids the meaning behind every stripe in the rainbow flag “so they could pledge allegiance to the Rainbow Flag — not the American flag.”

“Pure indoctrination,” noted Tierney, who asked a member of the RSJC why Miss Richfield “didn’t read well-known children's books instead of books focusing on sexuality?”   

The RSJC member responded, telling Tierney that if she is anti-LGBT or anti-Drag Queen, she should “leave the public library immediately.”  

A reporter for StarTribune.com confirmed the heavy-handed policing of the DQSH event:  

Richfield librarians were in force Saturday, dressed in their rainbow best and braced for trouble. Online, there had been ugly talk and threats of protests. Anyone who wanted to disrupt story time would have to get through a united front of book lovers in “All Are Welcome Here” shirts.

The Hennepin County Public Libraries plan 14 more “Stories Together with Drag Queen” events in the next month, where children can “celebrate self-expression, dress-up, and gender fluidity through stories, rhymes, music and movement with drag performers from our community.”   

The Hennepin County Public Library system observes “LGBTQIA+ History Month” in October to “celebrate members of our communities who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual, as well as others who don’t identify with a gender norm,” according to a statement on the library website. 

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“Miss Richfield 1981” at “Stories together with Drag Queens” last Saturday.

“Kids are usually completely delighted to see a performer who is so open and willing to embrace just the extreme of dress-up, which is something all children enjoy,” said Ashley Bieber, the county’s youth services librarian, in the StarTribune.com report.  

“They’re just over the moon and fascinated,” continued Bieber, and yet in their group picture with King, many of the kids look as if they’re nervous and would prefer to be someplace else. 

Libraries across the country complicit in normalizing LGBT behaviors in children

Though many are appalled by “Drag Queen Story Hours” and local library systems may resist attempts to hold them, the sprawling national American Library Association (ALA) is working to not only promote DQSHs but to teach librarians and others how to sneak these events into libraries in rural or conservative jurisdictions. 

The ALA’s summer national conference provided librarians from across the country with strategies for advancing gender identity ideology in schools and finding ways to bring “Drag Queen Story Hours” into public libraries despite the objections of local communities.   

Over the last few months, disturbing stories have come to light about DQSHs held in public libraries. On the West Coast, young children were photographed lying on top of and crawling on a drag queen — something that goes against standard school, camp, and church child protection policies — and on the East Coast a drag queen who read to young children was discovered to be involved with numerous lurid and pornographic sexual businesses and activities.

In Texas, two drag queens who participarted in DQSH events were revealed to be convicted sex offenders.

“The goal is to normalize abnormal, sexually deviant homosexual behavior by enticing children to question their sexuality,” pro-family activist Georgia Kijesky recently told LifeSiteNews. “The more children see men dressing up as women, the more normal it will become.”

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Doug Mainwaring is a journalist for LifeSiteNews, an author, and a marriage, family and children's rights activist.  He has testified before the United States Congress and state legislative bodies, originated and co-authored amicus briefs for the United States Supreme Court, and has been a guest on numerous TV and radio programs.  Doug and his family live in the Washington, DC suburbs.