Sonoma County anti-drag groups had roots in other causes, including anti-COVID lockdown and vaccine campaigns

Over the past few weeks, drag queen story hours have emerged as ground zero in the culture wars of Sonoma County.

The drag story hour events — part spectacle, part opportunity to humanize gender-nonconforming adults before an audience of children — have become staples at Bay Area public libraries in recent years, especially during Pride Month in June.

That has alarmed some socially conservative parents who say introducing children to drag queens, a culture born of cabaret theater, is inappropriate and possibly sinister.

Those dueling world views have collided in protests and counterprotests at libraries in Petaluma and Rincon Valley on June 17 and in downtown Santa Rosa and Windsor on June 18. At each location, many of the anti-drag demonstrators waved the same printed signs, reading “Stop Grooming Our Kids” or “Make Childhood Innocent Again.”

The signs were a testament to the efforts of several community groups that have been publicizing the anti-drag protests.

But the core groups involved did not coalesce overnight as a response to drag story hours. They had previously advocated for other conservative-leaning or libertarian causes — especially anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown efforts during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — as The Press Democrat found in a review of social media sites, interviews with members and links to past news coverage of the groups.

It’s an example of how fluidly activists can move from one issue to the next in the age of social media.

Perhaps most prominent among groups involved in the recent anti-drag protests is Sonoma County Parents Stand Up for Our Kids, a loosely organized private Facebook group with about 2,000 members. Several people quoted in Press Democrat coverage of the demonstrations said they were aligned with the group.

The Sonoma County Parents group first emerged in local news coverage in October 2021, amid wide-scale outcry as California announced plans to roll out a coronavirus vaccine mandate for K-12 students. Opposition to that mandate is the parents’ group stated focus on its Facebook page.

At first glance, the pivot to transgender issues would seem to be an about-face. In protesting the mandates in 2021, Sonoma County Parents Stand Up was pushing for greater liberty and family choice over restrictions meant to protect children.

In denouncing drag story hour, the group is favoring limits — on programming at public libraries — over choice.

Maria Pozzi, a member of Sonoma County Parents Stand Up since its early days, argued there is a common thread.

“Yeah, children,” said the Petaluma mother of three. “Leaving the children alone. Let kids be kids.”

Pozzi took exception to how her group is being portrayed at the library events.

“The counterprotesters are trying make it sound like we’re transphobic. That’s not what it is,” she said. “We believe that for years, some kids have been gay. But they became who they are organically. Now all of a sudden we have to have this in schools, all this gender ideology.”

The drag story times have become a Pride Month tradition in Sonoma County. This year, the county library system scheduled four of them for the weekend of June 17-18. There were protesters at all of them, and at an earlier rally the week before in Petaluma, in anticipation of the upcoming events.

Library staffers are informed of the book selections before the story hours, said Erika Thibault, director of Sonoma County Library. Only families with children are allowed into the reading rooms.

Diana Spaulding, manager of the Petaluma branch of the library, said 132 people attended drag story hour there June 17. Kids mostly sat on the carpet, in front of the reader — a “drag king” named Vera from Oakland.

“King Vera wore a more colorful outfit, definitely,” Spaulding said with a chuckle.

“And they chose specific books highlighting Pride Month and featuring loving families of all types. But this drag story hour was much like a regular children’s story hour. Librarians will read a story, and we might give early literacy hints and generally model excitement over reading.”

Spaulding said the whole performance was “very child-appropriate.” After it was over, she said, “several parents and children came up to thank us for holding the story hours.”

Sonoma County Parents Stand Up promoted protests at the story events primarily through its Facebook page and word-of-mouth, Pozzi said. She also sent word via private messages and reached some new supporters on TikTok. Other people took notice as they drove by the demonstrations, Pozzi said.

She said she was unsure about who ordered the printed signs, though she guessed it was someone with Sonoma County Parents Stand Up.

Another of the group’s core members is Adina Flores, according to Pozzi and Kara Mendez, another member who spoke briefly to The Press Democrat.

Flores is one of Sonoma County’s best known and most dogged community activists, especially when it comes to the issue that brought her to prominence — the anti-vaccine, anti-mandate drive during the pandemic.

Flores was one of the organizers, for example, of a loud protest outside a Healdsburg City Council meeting in December 2021, after then-Councilmember Skylaer Palacios had been denied entry to the council chambers because she was not vaccinated against COVID-19. Demonstrators banged on the glass walls of Healdsburg City Hall and gained entry to the lobby, prompting city officials to suspend the meeting.

Flores is a frequent commenter at council and commission meetings and has peppered Sonoma County officials with dozens of information requests through the California Public Records Act. She also has a sizable following on social media, where many of her posts focus on what she sees as a shadowy web of connections among county officials and local business and nonprofit leaders.

Other people have been promoting the anti-drag protests on the conservative social media site Gab.

One post there, by someone with the username @MULSIPHER on June 17, provided the times and locations of all four library protests to be held that weekend in Sonoma County.

“Please join us for the protest rallies in front of the libraries Saturday and Sunday. Invite your husbands to come — what a good way to celebrate ‘Father's Day’ by protecting children,” the post said.

The user added, “Please come 30 minutes early to stand with us. We will have signs for you if you don't have any.”

They also nodded to a collection of articles and video clips dealing with “the sexual exploitation of our children,” saying they were compliments of “Kathy of Save Our Sonoma.”

Save Our Sonoma, like Sonoma County Parents Stand Up for Our Kids, came to life as a vaccination-mandate opposition group during the pandemic.

“We began in 2020 with a small, but fierce group of individuals who were questioning the public health policies that were unfolding and affecting all aspects of our lives. These policies and restrictions were imposed with little justification, explanation or use of established and evidence-based scientific protocol,” Save Our Sonoma’s website reads.

The group paid for anti-lockdown billboards along Highway 101 and staged overpass rallies in 2021. And it has expanded its interests.

In May, Save Our Sonoma promoted a local talk on election integrity by Douglas Frank. He’s an associate of My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell who has relentlessly pushed misinformation about the 2020 election being stolen by Joe Biden, and whose phone was confiscated last September by FBI agents investigating an alleged breach of voting machines in Colorado.

Save Our Sonoma claims a newsletter subscriber list of more than 2,500 people. The group’s website identifies no individual contacts. A Press Democrat email to the organization’s account went unanswered.

The Gab post that referenced Save Our Sonoma also noted that Eagle Forum of California will host a Zoom webinar on drag story hours.

Eagle Forum is a national, right-leaning interest group. The founder of its Sonoma County chapter — and its former California president for 19 years — is Orlean Koehle, a soft-voiced Santa Rosa resident who will soon turn 80.

On a recent episode of the video series “Counter Culture Mom” that focused on the debunked connection between 5G technology and the COVID virus, host Tina Griffin introduced Koehle like this:

“She’s the director for Sonoma County Eagle Forum chapter. What is Eagle Forum? They are pro-life, pro-family, pro-traditional values, pro-property rights, pro-Second Amendment. Also pro-liberty, which is why she’s opposed to mandatory vaccines, which we call ‘the jab’ and a biohazard weapon. And she’s against 5G.”

Griffin might have added drag queen story hour to the list.

“I think so much of it is undermining the family,” Koehle told The Press Democrat.

“I’m a strong Christian, and I strongly believe there is a God who created us, and also a Satan. One of Satan’s objectives is to destroy the family. And to undermine the values parents have.”

Koehle put her beliefs into action recently, attending several of the library protests. She held aloft a large, professionally printed sign that read, “Libraries Are to Be Safe and Happy Places for Children,” along with several photos of cute kids.

Koehle said that as she was leaving the final anti-drag protest June 18 in downtown Santa Rosa, she began a conversation with two gay women. They told her there was no agenda behind the story hours; they were meant only as fun.

But when all three talked to a little boy leaving the event and asked him what he’d heard inside, Koehle said, he described a book about two worms who end up getting married.

The boy recited a line to the tune of “The Wheels on the Bus” that went, “The hips on the drag queen go swish, swish, swish.”

“I said, ‘See, this is the agenda,’” Koehle recalled. “Of course, this little boy will always remember this new version of the song ‘Wheels on the Bus.’”

She also questioned how the drag story hours were funded, suggesting George Soros — the liberal billionaire philanthropist and boogeyman of American conservatism — is behind much of it.

There is no evidence to support that claim.

The public Sonoma County Library system, supported by taxpayer dollars, pays $500 to the organization dragstoryhour.org for each drag queen reading session, said Ray Holley, the library system’s communications manager.

He said he doesn’t know how much of that goes to the individual reader.

The anti-drag activity tied to the story hours spurred some mobilization among gay-friendly groups, too. Most of the counterprotesters arrived at the events in groups of two or three, bearing homemade signs.

Renee Ho sent word to members of Amor Para Todos, and got a strong response, she said. She founded the group — the Spanish-language name means Love for All — in Petaluma in 2019, as a response to alarmingly high rates of suicide and depression among queer youth.

The drag story hours are a great way to show kids that loving, happy adults come in all flavors, Ho said.

“It’s important for little ones to see all types of people, and that people can be who they want to be,” she said. “At the end of the day, we thought it was important to help create a loving space for this event.”

Thibault, the Sonoma County Library director, thinks the protests, and the response by staff and law enforcement, generally went well this year. She wants to continue drag story hours in the future.

“It really does provide enormous value to families, especially LGBTQ families,” she said. “Just having programs for those families, where children can see their family represented, and feel empowered because there’s a place for them and their families.

“It tells them, ‘This is a normal part of life, and it’s OK.’”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.