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NBC Out & Proud


‘WE’RE COMING FOR YOUR CHILDREN’ CHANT AT NYC DRAG MARCH ELICITS OUTRAGE, BUT
ACTIVISTS SAY IT’S TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT

Organizers say the NYC Drag March is meant to be lighthearted and to poke fun at
anti-LGBTQ sentiment.


Participants hold a large banner at the Drag March in New York City on Friday.
Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images
SHARE THIS —
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June 27, 2023, 7:37 PM EDT
By Tyler Kingkade

Over the weekend, a short video circulated widely on social media of an
unidentified person at a New York City march during Pride festivities saying,
“We’re coming for your children.”

In the 21-second clip, circulated by a right-wing web streamer channel, dozens
of people march in the streets and are clearly heard chanting, “We’re here,
we’re queer, we’re not going shopping.” But one voice that is louder than the
crowd — it’s not clear whose, or whether the speaker was a member of the LGBTQ
community — is heard saying at least twice, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re
coming for your children.”




To conservative pundits, activists and lawmakers, the video confirmed the
allegations they’ve levied in recent years that the LGBTQ community is
“grooming” children.

But to Brian Griffin, the original organizer of the NYC Drag March, if that’s
the worst they heard, it’s only because he wasn’t there this year.

Griffin said he chanted obscene things in the past, like “Kill, kill, kill,
we’re coming to kill the mayor,” and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during
marches. People at the Drag March regularly sing “God is a lesbian.”

“It’s all just words,” Griffin said. “It’s all presented to fulfill their worst
stereotypes of us.” 



The “coming for your children” chant has been used for years at Pride events,
according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s
one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against
LGBTQ people. And in this case, they said, right-wing activists are jumping on a
single video to weaponize an out-of-context remark to further stigmatize the
queer community.

Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly referred to advocates for
LGBTQ rights as “groomers,” associating people who oppose laws that restrict
drag performances or classroom discussions of gender identity with pedophiles.
The charge is an echo of a decades-old trope anti-gay activists have used to
paint the community as a threat to the country’s youths, an allegation that some
advocates say endangers LGBTQ people. And the intense reaction to the video has
scared some attendees, who insist the quip has been taken out of context.

“It’s really scary to us,” said Fussy Lo Mein, a drag performer and activist who
was at this year’s march and declined to give their real name because of safety
concerns. “It doesn’t represent everybody — it represents that individual. I
thought it was a dumb idea, and I started chanting on top of it with alternate
verses.”

The video elicited outrage from right-wing pundits, who called the marchers
“demonic” and “evil.” GOP members of Congress tweeted that it showed legislation
to outlaw gender-affirming care is warranted, and the Florida Republican Party
claimed, “This is what the @FlaDems want in Florida.” 



An organizer for this year’s Drag March known as Hucklefaery Ken, who also
performs in drag as Sister-Lotti Da, declined an interview request, similarly
citing fears for his safety in light of the backlash over the video clip. But he
said in an email that the “coming for your children” chant was a “bad joke that
is being used to serve the interests of parasitic, predatory political
propaganda and policy.”


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NBC OUT & PROUDARMY VETERAN WHO DISARMED CLUB Q ATTACKER TO LEAD FIRST PRIDE
PARADE SINCE THE SHOOTING

“We won’t tolerate harm towards any child and advocate for the protection and
encouragement of every child to be able to live their true, authentic lives free
from fear and persecution,” Hucklefaery Ken said.

The NYC Drag March, which starts in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan
and ends at the Stonewall Inn in the West Village, is a smaller and more
provocative demonstration that is separate from the larger, televised NYC Pride
Parade that took place Sunday. 

Griffin, an activist who performs as Harmonie Moore, organized the first NYC
Drag March in 1994 in response to organizers of the Stonewall 25 demonstration,
who asked people not to show up in drag or leather to make their event more
palatable to certain communities. The Drag March is intended to push against the
notion that the LGBTQ community needs to assimilate into heterosexual standards
and is less serious than other Pride events. 



“It’s fun. It’s about performance,” Griffin said.

A leaderless group of activists with the Radical Faeries, a loose-knit LGBTQ
collective, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a charity and protest
group, have helped organize the march in more recent years, according to
HuffPost. There are no sponsorships by companies at the Drag March. 

“We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going shopping” is a chant that has long
been used by LGBTQ activists. At a 1990 march organized by ACT-UP, a group that
demanded more government resources to address the AIDS crisis, protesters
chanted it as they walked around a downtown San Francisco shopping mall. The
chant was also used by AIDS activists in Chicago demonstrations in the 1990s. 

According to multiple Drag March regulars, the “coming for your children”
variation has been used before. Last year, Gothamist reported, people at the
Drag March chanted, “Ten percent is not enough: Groom! Groom! Groom!”



Karla Jay, the first female chair of New York’s Gay Liberation Front and a
professor emerita at Pace University, said it’s a strategy to “take the sting
out” of accusations lobbied against the LGBTQ community. 

“I grew up in the time where it was considered really bad to be called ‘gay’ or
‘lesbian’ or anything like that, and what we did is we reclaimed words,” she
said. “Think of the Dyke March — these were words that could not be printed.”

Chants at Pride marches, Jay said, are usually meant more for the compatriots in
the crowd, not for people watching later on video.

“The person who said this in a march isn’t the person who came up with this idea
— the person in the march is saying, ‘Go ahead, call me this; why do I care?’”
she continued. “The person is trying to destigmatize this and claim their own
power. You can’t blame the victims here, and that’s what the right wing is
doing.”



Photos of this year’s march show on social media people with signs reading
“Groom Cisies” and “Trans, Your greatest fear, your biggest fantasy.”

“These are the words that they’ve used all our lives to manipulate and control
us,” Griffin said, “and we can now own them and see them for the falsehoods that
they are.”

Tyler Kingkade

Tyler Kingkade is a national reporter for NBC News, based in Los Angeles.



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