Amanda Klenk was looking forward to a fun, successful event hosted by a local drag performer, Aurora Divine. As the teen services coordinator for the Downers Grove (Ill.) Public Library, she strives to connect teens to new experiences in age-appropriate and accessible ways. Klenk’s upcoming Drag Queen Bingo event, designed for teens in seventh through twelfth grade, was scheduled for National Coming Out Day.
The event was turning out to be one of the largest teen programs in her four years programming with the library. The registration list was full and the waitlist was growing.
In August 2022, the program was promoted through the library’s usual outlets — a newsletter sent to homes, a blurb on the website and a published event on the library’s digital calendar. Klenk expected the usual flurry of negative comments that inevitably come along with promoting a program on the internet, but the usual stirring over the weekend turned into a tumultuous Monday morning.
The initial feedback focused on how library funds shouldn’t be spent on such a program. Klenk was expecting comments like these. When the emails started to escalate into phone calls and drop-ins, the backlash started interfering with the library’s everyday work. “The comments quickly crossed the line beyond complaints about our professions and into personal attacks,” Klenk says. “It was beyond the scope of anything I had ever dealt with.”
While the main group organizing against Drag Queen Bingo was local to Illinois, many people outside of the direct community found the program through internet searches and social media.
“The first person to screenshot and share the program was from Ohio,” says Cindy Khatri, Downers Grove Public Library’s public relations manager. “They were most likely Googling ‘drag queen library’ with the purpose of finding programs like this. It doesn’t matter where you’re located because the folks with this agenda will likely find your program if you use the words they’re searching for.”
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