LAFAYETTE, La. – A library story hour aimed at teaching tolerance is instead receiving backlash from a politician who sees a different message.

If it happens, Oct. 6's Drag Queen Story Time would be a first for the Lafayette Public Library. The main library and its nine branches have less flamboyant, regularly scheduled story times on both weekdays and weekends for kids, based on their ages.

But in this city about 120 miles west of New Orleans, Mayor-President Joel Robideaux was concerned enough about the event, in which men in drag read picture books to children ages 3 to 6, that he said he might try to cancel it. He devoted a good portion of a City-Parish Council meeting Tuesday to the topic and then left the room for 20 minutes of the public comment period, in which all but one of more than 20 citizens supported the story time.



"We need to learn how to recognize each other, how to see each other’s gifts and talents and flaws and how to meet each other,” library patron Marie Delahoussaye Diaz of Lafayette said. “The story time that’s caused so much controversy is just an opportunity for kids – older kids, younger kids, almost babies – to see each other, to experience something they’ve never seen before and to learn how to relate to it.”

► July 2017:At this library story hour, drag queens read to kids

► June 2017:LGBTQ definitions every good ally should know

► May 2016:FDA focuses on young LGBT smokers with $35.7M campaign

This particular Drag Queen Story Time is being sponsored by Delta Lambda Phi, a national social fraternity that gay men founded in 1986. The frat has a provisional chapter at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette that is hoping to participate.

"This program teaches love, diversity and acceptance – powerful and positive messages from which all can benefit – and we are grateful to have a community partner like the library who shares these values," the fraternity chapter said in a statement.

Writer Michelle Tea and literary arts nonprofit Radar Productions began Drag Queen Story Hour in December 2015 in San Francisco.

Since then, others have taken up the baton in more than two dozen cities across the USA – and not just in larger locales such as Los Angeles, New Orleans and New York or places such as Palm Springs, California, which is known for its gay-friendly culture. On Sept. 16, both Asheville, North Carolina, and Lincoln, Nebraska, are having events, according to the Drag Queen Story Hour website.

Iowa City, Iowa, and Milwaukee had their versions last month.

“It’s not that removed from a regular story hour, just extra fabulous,” said children’s librarian Anna Lillian Moser of Lewisboro Library in South Salem, New York, which had its first Drag Queen Story Hour in July. “I was joking that it’s like story time, but with better eye makeup.”

But even places such as Rahway, New Jersey, part of the New York metro area and 15 miles southwest of Manhattan, aren't immune from protests – this time in anonymous fliers left in some mailboxes this week that claimed the Rahway Public Library wanted to brainwash preschoolers.

Rahway Mayor Raymond A. Giacobbe said he thought only a small minority of people had that viewpoint because nearly 50 children and their parents participated.

In Mobile, Alabama, a group of pastors say they're taking their grievances about a Sept. 8 Drag Queen Story Hour at the Gulf Coast city's public library to Monday's Mobile County Commission meeting, the (Mobile) Press-Register reported Thursday.

► March 2016:'RuPaul's Drag Race' hits 100 episodes

► October 2014:Facebook apologizes to drag queens over real-name policy

During the hourlong session Tuesday in Rahway , entertainer Harmonica Sunbeam read stories out loud, sang with the kids and helped them make magic wands. She has been an actor and drag queen for 28 years.

She said she began her version of the children’s story hour last year at libraries, bookstores and festivals.

"It's a part-time job," she said. "I always have a good time connecting with the kids and the parents and seeing families together."

Most of the negative feedback she receives is confined to online postings, she said.

In Burlington, Vermont, Nikki Champagne and Emoji Nightmare led a reading and singing session in front of more than 100 children and their parents in December.

“People forget about all the activism queens do in the community,” Champagne said. "We’re more than those dive-bar queens who lip-sync to songs."

Contributing: Xochiti Pena, The (Palm Springs, Calif.) Desert Sun; Christine Hawes, Iowa City (Iowa) Press-Citizen; Amy Schwabe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Julie Moran Alterio, The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News; Alexander Lewis, (Bridgewater, N.J.) Courier News; and Brent Hallenbeck, Burlington (Vt.) Free Press. Follow Amanda McElfresh on Twitter: @TDAMcElfresh