Over the weekend, a short video circulated widely on social media of an unidentified person at a march in New York City during the Pride festivities saying: “We’re going for your children.”
In it 21 second video, broadcast by a right-wing web channel, dozens of people march in the streets and can be clearly heard shouting: “We are here, we are queer, we are not going shopping”. But a voice that is louder than the crowd (it’s not clear whose or if the speaker was a member of the LGBTQ community) is heard saying at least twice: “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re here for your kids.”
For conservative pundits, activists and lawmakers, the video confirmed accusations they have made in recent years that the LGBTQ community is “grooming” children.
But for Brian Griffin, the original organizer of the NYC Drag March, if that’s the worst they’ve heard, it’s only because he wasn’t there this year.
Griffin said he’s chanted obscene things in the past, such as “Kill, kill, kill, let’s kill the mayor,” and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during marches. People at Drag March regularly chant “God is a lesbian.”
“It’s just words,” Griffin said. “Everything is laid out to meet their worst stereotypes of us.”
The chant “Come for your children” has been used for years at Pride events, according to march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it is one of many provocative expressions used to regain control. of insults against LGBTQ people. And in this case, they said, right-wing activists are jumping into a single video to piece together an out-of-context comment to further stigmatize the queer community.
Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly referred to LGBTQ rights advocates as “cookies,” associating people who oppose laws restricting drag performances or classroom discussions about gender identity. with pedophiles. The accusation echoes a decades-old trope that anti-gay activists have used to paint the community as a threat to the country’s youth, an accusation that some advocates say endangers LGBTQ people. And the intense reaction to the video has spooked some attendees, who insist the joke was taken out of context.
“It’s very scary for us,” said Fussy Lo Mein, a drag performer and activist who was at this year’s march and declined to give his real name for security reasons. “It doesn’t represent everyone, it represents that individual. I thought it was a silly idea and started singing along with alternate verses.”
The video sparked outrage from right-wing pundits, who called the protesters “demonic” and “evil.” Republican members of Congress tweeted that they showed legislation to ban gender-affirming care is justified, and the Florida GOP reclaimedThis is what the @FlaDems in Florida want.
An organizer of this year’s Drag March known as Hucklefaery Ken, who also goes by Sister-Lotti Da, declined an interview request, similarly citing fears for his safety in light of the backlash over the video clip. But he said in an email that the “they’re coming for their children” chant was a “bad joke being used to serve the interests of parasitic and predatory political propaganda and politics.”
“We will not tolerate harm to any child and will advocate for the protection and encouragement of all children so that they can live their true and authentic lives free from fear and persecution,” Hucklefaery Ken said.
The NYC Drag March, which begins in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood and ends at the Stonewall Inn in the West Village, is a smaller, more provocative rally that’s separate from the larger, more televised New York Pride Parade that took place on Sunday.
Griffin, an activist who plays Harmonie Moore, organized the first NYC Drag March in 1994 in response to the organizers of the Stonewall 25 rally, who asked people not to show up in drag or in leather to make their event more acceptable to certain communities. Drag March aims to push the notion that the LGBTQ community needs to assimilate to heterosexual standards and is less dire than other Pride events.
“It’s fun. It’s about performance,” Griffin said.
A group of leaderless activists including the Radical Faeries, a loose LGBTQ collective, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a protest and charity group, have helped organize the march in more recent years. according to HuffPost. There are no corporate sponsorships at the Drag March.
“Here we are, we are fagots, we don’t go shopping” is a song that has has been used for a long time by LGBTQ activists. in a March 1990 organized by ACT-UP, a group that demanded more government resources to address the AIDS crisis, protesters chanted as they walked through a downtown San Francisco shopping mall. The singing was also used by AIDS activists at Chicago demonstrations in the 1990s.
According to multiple regular Drag March attendees, the “she’s coming for her children” variation has been used before. Last year, Gothamist reported, people at the Drag March chanted: “Ten percent is not enough: Boyfriend! Groom! Groom!”
Karla Jay, the first woman president of the New York Gay Liberation Front and a professor emeritus at Pace University, said it’s a strategy to “take the sting out” of the accusations being made against the LGBTQ community.
“I grew up in a time when it was considered very wrong to be called ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ or something like that, and what we did was demand words,” she said. “Think of Dyke March: these were words that couldn’t be printed.”
The chants at Pride marches, Jay said, are generally intended more for the compatriots in the crowd, not the people watching later on video.
“The person who said this at a march is not the person who came up with this idea; the person in the march is saying, ‘Go ahead, call me that; Why do I care?’” she continued. “The person is trying to destigmatize this and reclaim her own power. You can’t blame the victims here, and that’s what the right is doing.”
Photos from this year’s march show people on social media holding signs reading “Cisie Boyfriend” and “Trans, Your Biggest Fear, Your Biggest Fantasy.”
“These are the words that have been used our entire lives to manipulate and control us,” Griffin said, “and now we can own them and see them for the falsehoods that they are.”
