Regarding the upcoming Drag Queen Story Hour at the Children’s Book Cellar: I see that the featured book will be “Pride: The story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag” (“Waterville children’s bookstore gets backlash for drag queen event,” May 14.) There is nothing about sex in this book. It’s about gay people speaking up for their rights, and the only illustration that would show what this means is of two young men in suits riding a bicycle, with a “Just Married” sign in the back. It compares the rainbow flag with other flags and symbols, such as the American flag, the United Nations flag, the recycling symbol, the Red Cross — “… something to make people feel that they’re part of a community; something to give people hope.”

I’m not particularly comfortable with drag queens, just as I’m uncomfortable with women wearing such extreme expressions of gender identity (as defined by our culture: big eyelashes, big hair, lipstick, etc ). But if they want to dress up, so what? If it makes them happy, why not? It’s not hurting anyone.

If children are “confused easily,” as one of the protesters complains, they’ll ask questions, and if their parents don’t know the answers, maybe the whole family needs to ask questions.

Like it or not, humans do not naturally conform to our pink-vs.-blue, suit-vs.-dress, CEO-vs.-secretary categories, and pushing all people into one category or the other just leaves some people feeling that they’re not a part of the community.

 

Claire Prontnicki

Waterville