Normally, a story pitched to us about pushback on a library story hour would be acknowledged but not posted on usatoday.com because it is too local.
This time, the story from The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette, Louisiana, about drag queens who fight bullying and discrimination by reading to toddlers and leading quick crafts projects sounded vaguely familiar. I’d heard of other library programs across the country, including Palm Springs, California, with the same goals.
What made this newsworthy was a second story with a similar vibe that I found the same day in a different part of the country at the Courier News in Bridgewater, New Jersey: Some people — sometimes anonymous, sometimes in front of elected officials — were contending that Drag Queen Story Hour was a concerted effort to recruit kids to alternate lifestyles.
I ended up combining information from seven USA TODAY Network stories, instances from other locales and background on the program itself. The USA TODAY story was short but was the first national story on what in the past few months has become a wave of intolerance in states, including Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Texas, about a story time that’s trying to teach acceptance. (The Associated Press followed with its version two weeks later.)
I also created a photo gallery of local images from those story hours, giving some well-deserved exposure to Network photographers.
