In September, I wrote about towns across America welcoming Drag Queen Story Hour at public libraries, where dudes in dresses read books to children (here).
Well, the Houston Public Library was host to such an event, and now they’re admitting that the queen delivering tales of intrigue to little tykes was especially a drag: He was a registered child sex offender.
Way to go, everyone. Group effort. Well done.
The library’s apologized, but the group Mass Resistance — which made the sex crime discovery — wants more than a Sorry, Justin Bieber.
As per KHOU 11:
Mass Resistance claims it had been asking the City of Houston for months to disclose information about the drag queens, and when requests went unanswered, they did their own digging and made the shocking link.
In case you’re wondering what 32-year-old Alberto Garza’s criminal history entails, he was convicted in 2008 of sexually assaulting an 8-year-old boy.
— Charles Blain (@cjblain10) March 16, 2019
Hmmm… A man convicted of sexually abusing a young boy wants to participate in a program for children; could those be linked?
Here’s the library’s official mea culpa:
We were made aware today that one participant for Drag Queen storytime who read at the September 29, 2018, Drag Queen Storytime has a criminal background that should have prevented him from participating in the program. We assure you that this participant will not be involved in any future HPL programs.
Well that’s good.
In our review of our process and of this participant, we discovered that we failed to complete a background check as required by our own guidelines. We deeply regret this oversight and the concern this may cause our customers. We realize this is a serious matter.
Mass Resistance’s Tracy Shannon remains unimpressed:
“If they had done their job and due diligence, if they had said, ‘Wait — maybe it’s not a good idea to have a sex offender who at 200 pounds and 5-foot-11 assaulted an 8-year-old boy!’”
But the library says they got this:
Every program sponsored by HPL is supervised by HPL staff, and all children are accompanied by a parent and/or guardian. No participant is ever alone with children, and we have not received any complaints about any inappropriate behavior by participants at storytimes.
From now on, they’re gonna verify everything:
We are taking the appropriate action to ensure that the status of every participant in every program throughout our system is verified. We will continue to review our process to ensure that this cannot happen again. Once again, we apologize for our failure to adhere to our own process in this matter and to the hundreds of parents and caregivers who have enjoyed this program with their children.
In case you can’t get enough crossdressing creativity down at your local book building, or if your busy schedule’s thwarting your attempts to make it to the bearded lady in front of the periodicals, you’ll be glad to know you may be able to catch a gussied-up gal/fascinatin’ fella at your burgeoning rugrat’s local school Career Day — see here. And enjoy the video below.
-Alex
Relevant RedState links in this article: here and here.
See 3 more pieces from me: Minnesota political candidate says the “N” word, a poop maven, and getting over yourself.
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