From vaccines to drag queens: How the ‘freedom’ movement is targeting the queer community with false claims of ‘grooming’ children
It was at a Boston Pizza on a sunny December afternoon in Hamilton where Canada's cultural and political divide came to life in stark and venomous terms.
Inside, a brunch crowd cheered for drag performer Crystal Quartz, who strutted the aisles in a Tina Turner-inspired sparkling silver dress draped with an ebony ruffle coat, lipsyncing to Gloria Gaynor's anthem, I Will Survive."
But outside, in the Barton Street East restaurant's parking lot, there was no such mirth. Watched by a cordon of Hamilton police officers wearing bright yellow safety vests, freedom" convoy protesters waved F--k Trudeau flags and yelled about a grim doom they believe drag queens are visiting upon children.
They can't breed!" screamed Chrystal Peters, one of the ringleaders of protests travelling around Ontario, targeting all-ages events featuring drag performers. That's why they are trying to get everyone else's kids!"
The protests, replete with homophobic conspiracy theories of child grooming and sexual abuse, have hit two drag events in Hamilton. They've also targeted events in Welland, Fort Erie, Guelph, Kingston, Kitchener, Gravenhurst and Brockville in the last month. They promise to target more shows in other cities.
A drag storytime for kids and parents at a Brockville library on Dec. 17 was greeted with an arson attempt and bomb threat as well as demonstrations.
And The Spectator has learned a network of white nationalists responsible for ongoing racist vandalism campaigns in Ontario cities have found common cause with the protesters. The LGBTQ community has long been a target of neo-Nazis and white nationalists who regard them as a threat to their view of tradition.
All-ages drag shows have been around for at least a decade without complaint or fanfare. But since a fall controversy erupted over an Oakville high school teacher wearing women's clothing, co-ordinated anti-drag protests popped up in Ontario and other provinces.
Many of the protesters are part of the anti-vaccine and anti-mandate movements, including Peters, a freedom" convoy protester who calls all-ages drag shows a societal scourge" and a threat to the existence of humanity. Other high-profile protesters include Nico Hines, a flat-earther and former go-kart racer who was part of the Ottawa occupation and now smells brimstone in drag shows.
Their rallying cry is one that has been heard at protests against masks and vaccines: Protect the children."
They have a righteous goal they think they are fighting for, and it makes them feel like they are on a noble quest," said Timothy Caulfield, a conspiracy theory researcher from the University of Alberta, recently made a Member of the Order of Canada for his work to counter misinformation. This theme just metastasizes to fit the current conspiracy theory. You start embracing COVID conspiracy theories and all of a sudden you're talking about protecting the children, Pizzagate and the World Economic Forum."
As the demonstrations continue, counterprotesters have organized to push back. Tempers have started to rise, with some shoving and jostling between groups, but no serious incidents of violence.
For performers like Quartz, who cancelled a show at a Burlington Kelseys restaurant because of threats, the protesters cannot be dismissed as a mere gaggle of rabble-rousers. For her, they represent a resurgent and threatening attack on Ontario's queer community.
It's devastating, to be honest. None of them have even seen my show to judge it," she said. They say we are pedophiles because we perform for kids? They're just basing it on the fact that I'm wearing women's clothes. I mean, I make everyone happy every day, I look fabulous and none of it has anything to do with my genitalia."
Kiel Hughes, chair of Pride Hamilton and a drag performer, called the protests disgusting bordering on pathetic."
There are far worse things going on in the world and in this country that we should be protesting," Hughes said. It's a horrible brush some people paint the entire community with. I will never understand how pedophilia, homosexuality or transgender identity are synonymous with each other, because they are not in any way, shape or form."
Hamilton police labelled two Hamilton protests - the Dec. 11 Boston Pizza incident and one at a drag storytime for parents and kids at the Terryberry library on Nov. 24 - as hate incidents," which are occurrences that featured hatred aimed at a specific group of people but do not necessarily rise to the Criminal Code definition of a hate crime. Police are not saying if hate-crime investigations are underway.
It is not a response police board member, queer community advocate and Ward 2 city councillor Cameron Kroetsch says is acceptable. In the face of hate, he said, more needs to be done.
How are we going to respond in ways that are perhaps creative or thoughtful or frankly needed to deal with us because it's not making people feel like they want to be here?" said Kroetsch.
Storytime and the devil
While drag queen Hexe Noire read a book to the delight of children and their parents at the Terryberry Branch of the Hamilton Public Library, Nico Hines was horrified.
It wasn't the story that unsettled him. Rather, it was Noire's presence in women's clothing and the COVID protocols followed by the adults in the room.
As soon as she opened the book and started reading the story, I felt so uncomfortable," Hines said in an interview with The Spectator. Online he goes by the alias King Nico" on social media, where he promotes the protests, sells self-promoting swag, and pushes the baseless notion that the Earth is flat and covered in a dome.
I felt like I wanted to cry when I saw the children. All the parents were in there wearing masks. I felt like I was in the pits of hell."
Hines was a regular protester through the pandemic, objecting to masks, vaccines, public health mandates and now drag queens. From his particular Christian lens, it is all connected, he said.
He believes drag queens are part of a satanic cult. He makes posters claiming the queens and even the Pride flag are equivalent to the number 666, the number of the devil in some Christian mythology.
It's all biblical, he told The Spectator. So according to him, none of it is hate speech.
His views are echoed by Mike Thiessen, the founder of the influential evangelical political action group, the Liberty Coalition, that sponsored the anti-lockdown efforts and politicians in Canada.
Cross-dressing men are wolves in women's clothing," Thiessen posted on Twitter on Dec. 19, and on Dec. 28 retweeted a post comparing drag to blackface. He did not answer questions about his tweet.
Those responsible for organizing and hosting drag storytimes say the protesters are out of touch with reality.
Geraldine Slark, the CEO of the Brockville Public Library, said there is nothing sexualized about the drag storytime events, which they have been hosting since 2015.
Slark said kids enjoy colourful, flamboyant characters and the library chooses a selection of books for the performer to read. Parents are always present.
Aside from being fun, Slark said the diversity on display is important for children to see. In fact, the Brockville library deliberately sought out a drag king, a woman in male costume, as part of that commitment to diversity.
The protesters were going on and on about men in women's clothes and they apparently had no idea our performer that day was a drag king," Slark said.
Hughes, from Pride Hamilton, said drag storytime and all-ages drag events also provide important context and experiences for young queer people to relate to.
Most people are forgetting that queer people do exist under the age of 19, so some of them don't want to have to wait for the time they can go to nightclubs," Hughes said. They're seeing dance performances on TV and movies, and they want to experience that themselves. I don't see a problem with that, especially when most millennials grew up with many movies and plays and dramas that included men in drag."
Hines and Peters were at the Brockville protest and made their baseless allegations of grooming. Peters, who was arrested in October for causing a disturbance outside a Halloween drag event at a Gravenhurst church, did not respond to interview requests. Hines told The Spectator they are not against the LGBTQ community, just the abuse of children, although they don't present any evidence for their claims of grooming."
While the term grooming" gets thrown around, Slark said the protesters are misusing it to deliberately cause alarm.
Grooming is a process during which a sexual predator has close access to a child and wins their confidence and compliance to break down resistance to abuse.
But that requires personal contact with a child, to be alone with a child, and that is not happening here," Slark said. I don't think they know what grooming is. They are taking videos they find online of an adult, burlesque drag show and claim it is what is happening at the library."
Quartz said there is also nothing sexualized about her drag brunches at popular restaurants like Boston Pizza. She avoids swearing, and overtly racy jokes. She is careful about her song selection, performing to disco as well as songs from Disney movies, like Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians."
We're professionals. We keep things very appropriate," said Macy Manolo, a drag performer in Niagara whose brunch in Welland was also the subject of the anti-drag protests. Ironically, these people are outside with their F--k Trudeau flags. We won't even say ass.'"
The shop teacher and Pizzagate
Drag brunches and storytimes have been happening in Ontario for more than a decade, but they didn't become a target of the freedom" convoy networks until a fall controversy over the attire of an Oakville teacher.
A shop teacher at Oakville Trafalgar High School made national headlines when they showed up to work wearing huge fake breasts under a tight shirt. The school board has been criticized by Ontario's education minister for not upholding an appropriate dress code, and three parents are threatening to take the board to court.
Freedom" convoy groups staged protests at the school, arriving with signs promoting the People's Party of Canada and others that read Say NO to perverts in our schools."
Hines was one of several popular freedom convoy members to join a demonstration at the school on Sept. 28. During the event, he handed out clothes branded with his Crusaders of the Resistance" logo to students for free.
He said his gifts were not any kind of manipulation of children because he had no sexual intent.
I felt like I was just a teacher, a friend, a companion to share information," Hines said in an interview with The Spectator.
Since then, there have been nearly a dozen protests at drag brunches and storytimes in Ontario.
As it was with the school protests, the anti-drag events rally around the slogan protect the children." It is a trope that was common before the pandemic, said the University of Alberta's Caulfield, a Canada Research Chair in health law and policy who has studied the rise and spread of conspiracy theories.
It first emerged in 2016 during the proto-QAnon viral conspiracy theory incident known as Pizzagate," which claimed U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring from the basement of a pizza shop in Washington, D.C.
Since then, protect the children" has been a rallying cry in protests against pandemic mandates, masks and vaccines.
The slogan has a utility that carries across seemingly unrelated ideas in the shifting world of conspiracy theories, Caulfield said.
They put forward the axiomatic goal that we all agree on. Who doesn't want to protect our kids? So they retreat to it whenever the logical fallacies of their conspiracy theory are laid bare," Caulfield said. It's a very effective rhetorical strategy. And to be honest, politicians use this kind of device all the time."
It is also parroted by a small network of white nationalists. A group called Nationalist 13" - the number signifying A and C for Aryan Circle" - have claimed to be present at some of the anti-drag protests.
The groomers tried to provoke protesters by sticking cameras in our faces. They ended up getting angry when we confronted them about being anti-white pedophiles and ran inside," reads a post in the group's Telegram channel, referencing a Dec. 3 anti-drag protest in Kitchener.
They will survive
While Manolo performed at the Vegan Hippie Chick's Pride Niagara drag brunch in Welland on Dec. 17, anti-drag protesters got into shouting matches with counterprotesters outside. Rising tensions could lead to violence, but Manolo said protests cannot go unanswered.
We cannot step down. We are not going back any more years. There are so many people who have lost their lives, have lost opportunities in their lives because they're being suppressed by bullies," Manolo said. And there is no way that we should stop what we're doing. We're not doing anything wrong to begin with. If we stop, we're letting them win and we cannot do that."
Others, including Hughes, are opposed to counterprotests precisely because it dials up the heat. If violence erupts, counterprotesters could get arrested and the anti-queer rhetoric will become a secondary issue.
Like Hughes, Kroetsch would like to see a more proactive approach by the police. The councillor said he does not view the protests and counterprotests as both sides of a political argument. One is steeped in hatred and the other is a reaction to it.
They want police to take seriously the 2020 report that found the Hamilton police response to a violent 2019 clash between anti-queer demonstrators and counterprotesters at a Pride Hamilton event at Gage Park was inadequate.
The report found that Hamilton police failed to anticipate that homophobes, white supremacists and organized agitators" would disrupt the event.
Kroetsch said the report made it clear the police have tools at their disposal to intercede to stop hate groups, and wants to ensure they are used. During a recent police board meeting, Chief Frank Bergen told Kroetsch the service takes the report seriously and has an operational plan in place.
We clearly have a problem here when it comes to hate-based violence. So what are we going to do here differently to ensure that this isn't happening?" Kroetsch said. Historically, we've seen this happens lots of times where a group grows and becomes more relevant because no one is going to stand up and say that it's inappropriate. I think we have to."
At the Hamilton Boston Pizza, Quartz's audience staged their own pushback against the protest outside.
They stood up and held white sheets of paper over their heads with four words in bold black letters.
We won't tolerate hate."
Grant LaFleche is an investigative reporter with The Spectator. Reach him via email: glafleche@torstar.ca