(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) A “Back to School Pride Night” in Provo, Utah, featured a “family-friendly” drag show next to Brigham Young University.
The school does not permit Pride clubs or events on campus, so the group hosts activities and events off campus.
According to the Post Millennial, the Raynbow Collective, a nonprofit that supports the BYU gay community, hosts the event at the beginning of every school year.
Supporters of the event include members of the Black Menaces, a social media group that interviews BYU students questioning them about their religion. The event was protested by nearly 100 people who took issue with the drag show, which featured a performer called “Jenna Talia.”
The drag queen staged an erotic performance in front of children in the audience.
Several other drag queens performed in front of families.
“This shouldn’t be at a public park,” said BYU senior and the co-founder of BYU Conservatives Thomas Stevenson. He also called the drag show a “social contagion with gender dysphoria.”
Members of the RaYnbow Collective confronted protesters in costumes made of white sheets and PVC pipes made to resemble angels wings. These costumes were part of another protest meant to call attention to the killing of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, which took place in 1999.
It was recently revealed that Shepard was killed over crystal meth and not his sexual orientation.
In 2020, BYU updated the school’s Honor Code, removing a section banning “all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings.” University leaders explained several weeks later that same-sex relationships were still “not compatible” with the rules at BYU.
BYU is run by The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, which forbids same-sex romantic partnerships.
