A DRAG tour has again been subjected to protests as campaigners clashed outside a library hosting a storybook session for children.
Aida H Dee, real name Sab Samuel, was in town yesterday and today (Tuesday, July 25) to kick off the Drag Queen Story Hour official UK tour.
At the first event at Reading Central Library, footage circulating on social media shows protesters storm the library to disrupt the reading session while shouting a host of obscenities.
Today, the touring event moved on to Southcote Library where police were forced to guard the entrance to the library following the previous disruption.
READ MORE: Drag Queen Story Hour in Reading disrupted by protestors
One opponent Michael Chaves, in his fifties, who lives in East Sussex, said he was protesting against the storybook tours as it was ‘sexualising children’ and encouraging sexualisation.
He added he would continue to peacefully protest the event round the south east.
The small event was heavily policed, with nine officers standing guard at the entrance. Officers stood in a row to deter protesters from entering the library, which was free but ticketed.
Others opposing the event included a young man and a Christian couple handing out flyers.
READ MORE: Coronavirus and protest risk assessed for Drag Queen Story Hour events
However, a number of young people from the LGBT+ community and allies had also turned up to support Aida H Dee.
Billie Antimony, 18, from Calcot said: “I’m here in support of drag, and children being exposed to drag and the arts.
“Children are taken to pantomimes every single year where drag dames are performing, they make innuendos as well, they have fun and the kids enjoy it.
“It’s just two different performance arts, they are both exactly the same thing and they are both child friendly in the right contexts.
“Pantomimes have adult nights where kids aren’t allowed because there are rude jokes just like these performances won’t have rude jokes and explicitly sexual things because they are for kids.
“No kid is going to be exposed to explicitly sexual things through an event like this.”
Aida H Dee was reading childrens books ‘Three Goats United’ and ‘It’s Snot A Problem’ at the events.
No attempts were made by protesters to enter the event in Southcote, and Thames Valley Police have made no arrests at any of the events in Reading.
Drag Queen Story Hour will continue in a tour of the UK which will take it to London, Bristol, Brighton, Wokingham, Woodley and Earley.
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