In a shimmering green dress, matching green heels, pearls, and rainbow earrings, drag queen Tara Hoot lip-synched to music, twirled around while shooting bubbles from her brightly colored plastic bubble guns during her March 2023 children’s brunch performance at Crazy Aunt Helen’s, a now-closed gay-owned restaurant in Washington, D.C.
She also read Be Brave Little One, a 2017 sing-song children’s book, saying, “When I look at you shining bright as the sun, I wish for you this: be brave little one. Be brave to be you on your journey begun. Let your heart lead the way — be brave little one.”
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Outside of the restaurant, several anti-LGBTQ+ protestors yelled about trans people “grooming” kids. One held a sign that said, “PRIDE IS OF THE DEVIL.” Neither Hoot nor the patrons could hear them, however, because a group of about 50 volunteers with the Rainbow Defense Coalition showed up half an hour before the event to block the protestors with large rainbow-colored umbrellas and drown out their screams by blasting music from Disney musicals.
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Hoot is just one of numerous drag performers who have been targeted by threats and protests as conservatives accuse them of “sexualizing children.” Between late 2022 and early 2023, the LGBTQ+ media organization GLAAD counted 161 incidents of anti-LGBTQ+ protests and threats targeting drag events.
I’m not going to let people bully me into not bringing joy to the world. If their hearts are so dark and their lives are so sad, that’s what they’re focused on in this moment, then they can be sad and lonely and angry, and I’m going to be the counter to that with my love and joy in lifting people up.
However, Hoot has refused to be intimidated, partly because of the support from her community. There have been many instances of community members holding massive counterprotests, venues beefing up security to protect their patrons and performers, and in some cases, queer community members chasing the haters away — showing that the drag queens and their allies aren’t as easily frightened as haters would like.
Hoot — who is from Terre Haute, Indiana — began performing in drag during the pandemic to give people joy. She tells LGBTQ Nation that she initially felt really nervous going to Crazy Aunt Helen’s that day after learning that protestors might try to interrupt the event. A few Proud Boys had protested one of her events the month before. One week before her performance at Crazy Aunt Helen’s, some Proud Boys demonstrating at another children’s drag event shoved some counterprotesters while shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs.
But when Hoot and her husband turned the corner on their way to Crazy Aunt Helen’s, they saw police keeping the protestors apart from the wall of rainbow umbrellas. To Hoot, all the umbrellas signified “a really overwhelming show of support.”
“[Afterward] I got like 500 new Instagram followers, I had all these news stories because news crews were there,” she said. Even The Washington Post covered the incident.
“I got all this publicity,” she continues. “So it was the exact opposite of probably what [the demonstrators] wanted to do.”
During her events, Hoot dances with kids, hands out coloring pages and rainbow ribbons for them to enjoy, reads books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and sings upbeat Broadway hits like Barbra Streisand’s “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” But protests and bomb threats have also become a recurring part of her work, she says.
“I guess I feel like I’m used to it,” she tells LGBTQ Nation. “And then I’m always sad that I say that because I shouldn’t be used to that… but it doesn’t ever make you want to stop doing it.”
Hoot dressed up as Mrs. Claus for a December 2023 all-ages holiday brunch hosted by the MotorKat restaurant and bar of Takoma Park, Maryland. While lip-synching to Leslie Gore’s upbeat 1963 song “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows,” she showered the crowd with bubbles while patrons sang along and their children danced excitedly between the tables.
Five minutes before the event’s end, police notified the venue’s general manager about a bomb threat. Hoot told audience members to evacuate the bar for their safety. Police shut down the entire business strip and brought bomb-sniffing dogs to inspect the area before reopening the strip a few hours later. No bomb was ever found.
The next day, Hoot made a defiant Instagram post, writing, “I couldn’t do what I do without the support of amazing venues and fans, in particular when my events continue to be targeted by bogus bomb threats…. My story-time brunches and events will continue! And I can’t wait to see all of you gorgeous humans there! Onward, darlings!”
Despite her defiant show of courage, Hoot says, “Every time I get ready for the event, I’m like… ‘Is today the day that something’s gonna hit the fan?’ so to speak…. It’s always in the back of your head as a drag performer, particularly when lies are being spread about drag performers in the news with politicians. Anytime that rhetoric starts spiking, you wonder if you’re unsafe.”
She feels pretty safe walking in her community alongside her husband and friends. She also hasn’t received threats in her email or social media, nor has anyone ever visited her house, even though she has a somewhat public profile. Nevertheless, protests continue to pop up at her performances.
At last year’s Columbia Heights Day, a one-day neighborhood festival in D.C., Hoot performed at several events in the 100-degree June heat. As she began reading a book at her first performance of the day, a man with a megaphone began calling her a “groomer” and transgender. (Hoot isn’t trans.) He also recorded her reaction.
Hoot immediately began performing a song as her husband, some of the parents, and other volunteers encircled the man and got him to leave.
“It’s always the same radical right-wing Christianists,” Hoot says. “They can be spending their time making food for the hungry or building shelters for the unhoused. But instead, they’re harassing families… recording families and children to put on the internet.”
“I’m not scaring children,” she continues. “People chose to be there with their families.”
When protestors accuse queer people like her of sexually abusing kids, “It’s often an admission of their own guilt… of their own thought process and their own kind of sickness and twisted mind,” she says, adding that she doesn’t like to think about it.
When she received threats at one of her performances in Arlington County, Virginia, elected officials and the local chamber of commerce released statements denouncing the threats. However, she says D.C.’s city council members and non-voting congressional Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) have never issued any such support, even though Hoot has contacted them several times. The seeming lack of care for small businesses and the targeted queer community frustrates Hoot.
She has been in contact with other drag performers who have faced threats, as well as Qommittee, a group dedicated to “bringing drag artists together to protect each other, support each other, and help each other thrive.” The group seeks to support drag artists and venues by documenting patterns of organized hate and providing community resources to navigate threats, especially for performers in rural areas, artists of color, and gender-expansive individuals.
Hoot has also recently joined protests against the president’s takeover of the Kennedy Center. The president has said he won’t allow drag performances to take place at the historic D.C. venue, even though drag performances have long been a part of the nation’s history.
“I’m not going to let people bully me into not bringing joy to the world,” she continues. “If their hearts are so dark and their lives are so sad, that’s what they’re focused on in this moment, then they can be sad and lonely and angry, and I’m going to be the counter to that with my love and joy in lifting people up.”
“When you come into a story time, and there you see bubbles and the Reading Rainbow theme song, me with great butterfly wings flying around trying to find my books, I think it just provides that sense of whimsy and sense of escape that also has a thread of ‘We got this. We can do this, and we are strong when we stand together.'”
She said parents will bring their trans and gender-nonconforming kids to her events so their kids can “just be themselves and relax.” Sometimes, parents will come up to her after performances with tears in their eyes, thanking her. One told her that her events are better than therapy.
“Right now, especially, people are just overwhelmed with the bad and bad news that’s coming. You know, every day there are 15 executive orders of crazy coming from this White House that are trying to erase our story, erase history… I think we all need a mental break… It’s just a great way for the kids to connect and for us to build,… a space where we can gather, we can build community, and we can to kind of refuel to keep going.”
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