POCATELLO — A local man announced during a Pocatello City Council meeting Thursday that he’s petitioning against a voluntary monthly program at the Marshall Public Library in Pocatello that involves drag queens reading books, singing songs and making crafts with Gate City area children.
Pocatello carpenter and founder of the group Citizen Patriots United Ted King told council members at City Hall on Thursday that he has created a petition on Change.org and has organized an oppositional attendance to the next scheduled Reading Time with the Queens program at the Marshall Public Library, set for Feb. 15 at 11:30 a.m.
“I have nothing against the people who live the drag lifestyle; that is their choice,” King told the Journal during a Wednesday phone interview. “I am not ignorant enough to think they should live how I think they should live, but my stance is that the library is paid for by all of us as taxpayers. It’s there to instill a love of literacy in kids. It’s not there to encourage a political agenda.”
King says he believes that because the library is a publicly funded Pocatello department, groups with political affiliations or associations should be prohibited from using the library to further their agendas. King said he believes a program that involves drag queens reading stories to children promotes LGBTQ ideals, and he associates those values with liberal political ideology.
King said he intends to attend the Reading Time with the Queens program at the library next week, and on Thursday, sought out the Pocatello City Council to consider “legislation that is non-discriminate but prevents political, ideological or religious groups from presenting at a public library.”
“You can do what you want where you want but not at a place where more than 60 percent of the people who pay for the building don’t agree with it,” King added.
The Pocatello resident who started Reading Time with the Queens in 2017, Joseph Crupper, who is also known locally by his alter ego Cali Je, was in attendance for Thursday’s council meeting, though he did not make a formal statement.
Crupper spoke with the Journal on Thursday evening after the council meeting. In response to King’s planned opposition and petition, he said, “The petition and planned opposition is not going to stop us from hosting Reading Time with the Queens. As a group, we will not let this deter us from spreading our message of positivity, community-building, self-acceptance and the importance of literacy for children.”
In addition to his opinion that drag queens reading to children is a partisan event and should be prohibited from a public venue such as a library, King said he has a 4-year-old son who is impressionable. King said he believes drag queens reading to children will make them more susceptible to encountering gender dysphoria, which involves a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify, according to the American Psychiatric Association.
“These drag queens are talking to kids that are just learning gender structures and barriers between boys and girls, and when they see somebody who just bucks that structure, how confusing is that to them?” King said. “They haven’t even learned one plus one is two yet.”
King continued, “If it’s really about promoting a love of literacy in children, then why the drag? Why the controversy? Mr. Rogers did a fantastic job to promote literacy and self-love wearing a red cardigan sweater and Keds.”
While King is hopeful some type of legislation preventing ideological, political or religious events at a public venue is enacted, in the meantime the Marshall Public Library cannot and will not make decisions about who can use the venue based on the content of their usage or event, says Marshall Public Library Director Eric Suess.
“If someone had a gun rights group who wanted to use the library meeting room and I let them do that and then someone opposed to gun rights requested to use the room and I said no, that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen,” Suess said. “I am not in a position to put the city in a liable situation based on content. It’s what’s referred to as viewpoint discrimination, which could open the city up to litigation.”
Moreover, Suess said he must operate within the legal framework of Pocatello code and cannot prevent an oppositional attendance to the planned reading time on Feb. 15. While individuals who plan to oppose the reading time must not be disruptive to the event, bring signs into the building or intimidate or harass any of the presenters or participants, Suess said it is within their First Amendment rights to attend the event in a non-combative capacity.
“Their speech and rights are protected as much as the people presenting,” Suess said. “If they plan to attend the event, it should be done in a way that the children can still enjoy the event, sing songs, make crafts and be read to. But I am not going to tolerate any activity that prevents them from being able to do that.”
