For five years, Republican protesters have been fighting to shut down Drag Queen Story Hour in Washoe County. This year, they finally succeeded.
Their final solution? Violence.
When Drag Queen Story Hour was introduced to Washoe County in 2019, opponents began a political war of attrition. Through obnoxiously long and abusive public comment sessions that more closely resembled Maoist struggle sessions than anything any American should tolerate in a free country, activists successfully drove four of the five library trustees away last year. Doing so, however, didn’t bring them any closer to firing Washoe County Library System Director Jeff Scott (they want him replaced because he was the director when the library system started hosting Drag Queen Story Hour), nor did it bring them any closer to banning “commie books” featuring LGBTQ+ content (homosexuality was illegal in the Soviet Union).
Outside of public comment periods, however, the community has repeatedly spoken with their feet and their families in support of Drag Queen Story Hour. Hosting libraries have been consistently packed to capacity, oftentimes with long lines of parents and children waiting outside for their turn. Candidates for public office who run on banning the events, or allegedly troublesome books more generally, seldom gain much traction.
Even if opponents had the advantages of numbers, however — which they most decidedly don’t — we live in a republic of laws, not a democracy of fickle men.
Two laws all Americans live under, at least until such time as we collectively choose to follow the legal process of amending our Constitution, are the First and 14th Amendments of the Constitution of the United States. Put together, those two amendments prohibit all levels of American government, including public libraries, from abridging the freedom of speech or the right of the people to peaceably assemble. Two additional laws all Nevadans live under, meanwhile, are sections 9 and 10 of Article 1 of the Nevada Constitution, which further prevent our state or local governments — once again including public libraries — from abridging those freedoms as well.
In short, government institutions in Nevada are not allowed to prevent people from peaceably assembling to talk to each other.
No, not even if someone disapproves of how the speakers are dressed.
No, not even if the person who’s dressed strangely is addressing children.
Since opponents of Drag Queen Story Hour have neither numbers nor law on their side, their ability to achieve their censorious goals through manipulation of political processes has been limited. Yes, they could make library board and county commission meetings unbearable — a hundred or two of the nearly half a million residents in Washoe County can do that easily enough — but there are still hard legal and electoral limits to what any elected officials, appointee or government employee can deliver for them.
With these limitations, opponents faced a choice.
They could fight in the marketplace of ideas by, for example, trollishly organizing conservative-themed story hours. Doing so, incidentally, remains just as constitutionally protected as Drag Queen Story Hour.
They could choose to boycott the library — doing so is also constitutionally protected speech.
They could gracefully accept defeat.
Or they could make library staff afraid to do their jobs.
Channeling the spirit of the Jan. 6 protests, one protester opted for the latter and attempted to force his way past a library employee into a Drag Queen Story Hour event, injuring the employee in the process. That someone might attempt this was not entirely a surprise — event organizers added various security measures to improve the safety of attendees and library staff in anticipation of such efforts. What was surprising, however, was the Reno Police Department’s failure to bring the perpetrator to justice.
That ultimately led the county’s Workplace Violence Committee to recommend they stop hosting Drag Queen Story Hour — which, in turn, led to the subsequent cancellation of future events hosted at the library.
This was not the first time this year that a Drag Queen Story Hour event was disrupted through violence. A similar event in Pennsylvania was canceled in March after a suspicious package was found and multiple threats were recorded against the library.
Given the increasing aggression of the protesters and the demonstrated inability of local law enforcement to keep staff safe during Drag Queen Story Hour events, it’s completely understandable why library staff chose to refuse to accept any further risk to themselves. Every county employee, including those working in libraries, deserves a safe working environment that is free from physical assault. Local librarians should not be obligated to tolerate or accept violence in the workplace.
Having acknowledged that, however, Drag Queen Story Hour protesters just successfully used physical violence to exercise a heckler’s veto against an event they found distasteful without experiencing any meaningful legal consequences. Worse yet, other protesters around the country are beginning to achieve similar results using similar methods.
If violence, whether threatened or actually delivered, becomes a reliable shortcut toward achieving political change, it’s only a matter of time before protesters stop delivering public comments and start delivering something far worse. Until then and unless local law enforcement takes a firmer stand against such behavior — and fast — Washoe County and its employees can likely “look forward” to seeing more such attempts in the near future.
David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons, and a weekly opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected].
