Jesper Duffy, known professionally as Lavish Lazuli, performed a drag story time for a willing audience in a council venue in Cumberland, Australia this week as a protest against a drag story time ban brought by the council last year.

“I think it’s misguided to believe that drag is inherently adult in nature,” Duffy said, explaining his frustration with the ban. “You wouldn’t say that to a Disney princess performer. You wouldn’t say that to someone in a Halloween costume — so why are you saying it about us?”

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In February last year, the council banned drag story times. Former mayor and current councilor Steve Christou claimed to have been contacted by concerned constituents who were concerned about drag performers’ effect on children. He then spearheaded an aggressive campaign to get the council to approve a ban.

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Rainbow Cumberland, founded and lead by Kayla Hill, has been campaigning to overturn the ban. Hill explained that it was crucial for Duffey’s drag story time to be held “in a council venue to show that these types of events are really beautiful.”

Hill called the story time “a fun and creative act of civil disobedience to show the power of the community and also the demand.”

One Cumberland councilor who represents the Green Party, Sujan Selven, encouraged other councilors to speak with the LGBTQ+ community and attend drag story times themselves so that they could understand what they were banning.

Christou has pushed back against the campaign with numerous tweets and videos, transphobic language suggesting that children are at risk from the LGBTQ+ community, and threats to event organizers.

“The realities are these bans were not homophobic, they were designed to let kids be kids,” claimed Christou, even though drag is widely known to be a gay and queer theatrical art form. “I will ensure that children’s innocence, safety, and freedoms are protected from such ideology at a young age.”

Christou has also said that he wants details about Duffey’s event and added, “Somebody will be held to account if warranted”.

This is not the first time that Councilor Christou of the Our Local Community Party has attacked the LGBTQ+ community of Cumberland in New South Wales. In 2024, he led the campaign against the inclusion of a book, Same-Sex Parents by Holly Duhig, in the children’s section of a council-run library.

Again, citing claims that he was contacted by concerned constituents, Christou then led a campaign that resulted in bans for all same-sex parenting books at all of Cumberland County’s eight council-run libraries.

That ban was reversed shortly after, following a backlash and concerns about censorship led to a fast petition. “When civilizations turn to burning books or banning books it is a very bad sign. That is equally true for local councils,” said New South Wales Arts Minister, John Graham, at the time.

Rainbow Cumberland now hopes that they can launch a petition against the drag story time ban and receive a similar level of support.

While Christou has touted the conservative and Christian leaning nature of the Cumberland community, Hill has rejected that reasoning, saying, “I think we should fight back against the idea that because somewhere is conservative we should inherently just accept conservative policies. We deserve safety and we deserve dignity and we deserve joy.”

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