Drag Queen Blames Children for 'Inappropriate Contact' During 'Story Hour' Event
Claims kids knocked him on the floor and climbed on him following backlash
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The drag queen at the center of a widespread backlash - after images of him rolling around on the floor with young children during a "Story Hour" event emerged online - says the kids were to blame for the "inappropriate contact."
The images were taken during an incident that occurred during Drag Queen Story Hour and show "female" impersonator Carla Rossi lying on the floor of the St. John’s Library in Portland, Oregon, with several pre-school and kindergarten-aged children.
Some of the photos show the kids lying ontop of Rossi, with one image showing a young boy lying on the drag queen, grabbing the man's fake breast while he lies on the floor smiling.
Images of the incident, that occurred in a public library during an event where drag queens are meant to read stories to young children, quickly went viral, triggering international outrage.
The images went viral after they were brought to the attention of the public in July following a report by LifeSiteNews.
The photos, which had been posted on the Multnomah County Library’s own Flickr account in October 2018, were quickly removed after the LifeSiteNews report went viral.
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According to LSN, drag queen Rossi, who last year said the kids were climbing on top of him after a dance move called a “death drop,” changed his tune after receiving criticism, saying the kids knocked him over as he tried to fight them off.
He also blames his bad hip and the six-inch heels he was wearing at the time.
In an October 2018 Instagram posting in which he was pictured with a little girl lying on top of him, he said:
“Drag Queen Storytime yesterday ended with a death drop on a bubble wrap dance floor as the babies crawled all over Carla Gulliver’s Travels–style, and I have the best job in the world.”
Shortly after images of the troubling scene in the Portland library went viral, Rossi’s gleeful tune changed.
In a subsequent Instagram post, he said he didn’t so much want to “set the record straight” as “break it altogether.”
“The photographed kids knocked me over and piled on me, and I laughed with them and their parents and the library director and told them we had to get up as I tried to look out for my bad hip in the process,” said Rossi.
“What would you do differently if kids having a Cher dance party — on bubble wrap — knocked you over in six-inch heels and a floor-length rainbow caftan?” he asked.
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Yet the pictures of the kids with Rossi don’t seem to show the drag queen struggling to get the kids off him.
On the contrary, each one looks as if the kids and Rossi were posing for the camera.
Drag queen slated to hold “Drag Workshop” for teens later this month
Despite the unwanted attention, Portland’s St. John’s library apparently intends to host another event by “Portland’s premier drag clown Carla Rossi” on Saturday, September 21.
Billed as a “Teen Drag Workshop,” an announcement on the Multnomah County Library website speaks of “the vast abyss of drag and its potential” and “the unchartable spectrum of genders and sexuality.”
The event also promises to recount drag’s “legendary elders, artists, and ancestors, from Two-Spirits (and other-gender shamans of the pre-settler North American continent) and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Marsha P. Johnson, Leigh Bowery, Elvira, RuPaul, and Christeene.”
