The Rise in Anti-LGBTQ Extremism That Brought a Local Drag Event Into the National Spotlight and the Community That Refused to Back Down

The forecast in Chardon for Saturday, April 1, called for turbulence, and not just of the meteorological variety. In addition to the rain, there were to be protests of two drag events driven by right-wing hate and outlandish accusations of child grooming.

But performer Veranda L’Ni brushed it all off: “We’re ready to handle any storms. We’re no stranger to inclement weather.”

So drag did happen in Chardon Square. By 11 o’clock, as all 60 attendees at Element 41 took their seats, so had the protestors taken their positions out front, behind the eight-foot-tall chain link fencing and jersey barriers, with 122 police officers, some called in from as far away as Cleveland, standing guard. By then, as skies above the square grayed, it was possible to hear, if one managed an auditory gap, a strange mingling of L’Ni’s version of “Copacabana” with the line of flag-holding Patriot Front soldiers shouting, “Life! Liberty! Victory!”

Chardon’s evolution into ground zero of national drag hysteria started earlier in the year when Mallory McMaster, an admittedly outspoken LGBTQ activist who lives on a horse farm in Chardon, encouraged Element 41 owner Paul Mendolera back in early February to book a drag brunch headlined by L’Ni, who bills herself as “Cleveland’s tallest drag queen.” (L’Ni’s seven-two, in heels.) That would be followed by a drag story hour in Rev. Jess Peacock’s United Church of Christ in nearby Chesterland. Both had spearheaded drag or Pride events on the Square before, without negative fanfare. But April 1st, for whatever reason, was different.

“I think Jessie Peacock has a couple screws loose,” a bearded man from St. Helen’s Church in Chesterland said in the middle of Chardon Square, gripping a black rosary. “I’m here not just to ensure kids are okay. I’m here to protest mental illness.”

“The reverend, the drag queens, they’re all being selfish,” a white-haired man wearing a backpack said nearby. “This is not what my church would agree with. This is against the church in general.”

Across the street, past the jersey barriers, was Craig Hoffman, who was standing with his husband. Both showed up to support L’Ni and the queens despite the risks. Behind them, a woman held a sign that read, “GENDER FLUIDITY MESSES WITH THE MISOGYNIST MIND.”

“They’re just here—what’s the word?—to stir the pot,” Hoffman said. He turned to monitor the window of a passing SUV. “They just want to create controversy for the sake of creating controversy, without any evidence of whatever they’re saying is true.”

“Jesus came in a form, you know,” Hoffman’s husband Rev. Allen Harris said. He smiled. “Jesus was the divine form that we could understand. And I think drag is a form of being in the world that some people get.”

In the summer of 2015, Michelle Tea, an activist based in San Francisco, had an idea for an educational project. It was one part Reading Rainbow and another part RuPaul’s Drag Race, which immediately was interpreted by conservatives as a ploy intended to push buttons. That summer, Tea and a queen named Pickle walked into the Harvey Milk Memorial Library to read to a group of cross-legged kids, under what Tea fashioned as a primer for the growing world of gender psychology. “In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions,” her website reads, “and imagine a world where everyone can be their authentic selves.”

Seven years later, minutes before midnight on November 1, 2022, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich walked into a bar called Club Q, a haven for Colorado Springs’ drag scene. Aldrich, clad in body armor, carried an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun. Before he was tackled by Richard Fierro, a U.S. Army Vet, Aldrich managed to kill five people—Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump, Ashley Paugh and Raymond Green Vance—and injure 18 others.

The Club Q shooting, like the Pulse Nightclub massacre six years before it, quickly became the drag world’s 9/11. According to a report published by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in April, the Club Q incident was one of 166 “protests and significant threats” to the LGBTQ community since early 2022. The events, though not all as deadly as Denver’s, follow a predictable cast. In San Lorenzo, Calif., Proud Boys stormed a public library last June. In August, Antifa counter protesters clashed with Neo-Nazis outside a drag brunch in Roanoke, Texas. And in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a month before the Club Q shooting, a man firebombed a donut shop after the store hosted its own drag event.

Although it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where the anti-drag protestors got the idea, the seed of their animosity comes from the false belief that drag queens are “grooming children.” On October 19, 2022, around the time of the Tulsa firebombing, Fox correspondent Tucker Carlson ran a segment awash with criticism of “all-ages” shows. It was headlined: The Left Is Openly Sexualizing Children. “This is such a moral atrocity it’s hard to believe that adults are for it—but they are,” Carlson told his guest, Sara Gonzales, as TikTok videos of kids handing queens singles played.

Gonzalez, a pundit for Blaze TV, echoed the sentiment. “And what is the best way to confuse children?” she said. “Confuse them about their sexuality, confuse them about their gender, expose them to things that their little brains are not ready for yet.”

By the start of 2023, far-right rancor that used queens as their target had reached statehouses across the nation. By then, 14 legislative proposals to “restrict or ban” drag had been introduced, from Texas to Illinois and North Carolina. In March, Tennessee became the first to get one into law when it passed S.B. 3, a law that punishes performers of “adult cabaret” for performing anywhere a child could watch. (It’s currently blocked by a federal judge.) Regardless, it was the first effective path in the U.S. to slapping queens with a Class E felony for, as Gov. Bill Lee told the Associated Press, “sexualized entertainment in front of children.”

“I’m a bit nervous, being such a public activist,” Lady J Martinez O’Neal, a Cleveland-based drag queen originally from Tennessee, told Scene in an email. And, “I’m extremely worried about what happens if I get pulled over traveling to and from my parents’ house. What documents do I need to keep myself safe?”

If Chardon was the main stage this year, Wadsworth was its dress rehearsal. On March 11th, an activist named Juan Collaeo hosted a “Rock-n-Roll Humanist Drag Queen Story Hour” there in Memorial Park. The result, McMaster recalled, was a “shit show.” Nearly 200 attendees gathered along with police from seven cities, a drug task force, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, Antifa members in black and Neo-Nazis in red. Bull-horned chants from white supremicists—“Pedophiles get the rope!”, “F*gs go home!”—mingled with “Sieg heils!” from skinheads in black ski masks. “We’re still here. We’re not going anywhere,” a Nazi with a bullhorn told a documentarian. He paused, then said, “They could suck my dick.”

McMaster saw what happened there and worried about what would happen in Chardon, as calls for protests grew in advance of the events. While monitoring Proud Boys’ threats on Signal and Telegram, she arranged $20,000 in security – metal detectors, K-9 units, traffic directors.

Everyone had good cause to worry: On the Saturday before the event, March 25th, Rev. Peacock woke up to find that his United Church of Christ’s sign had been destroyed. Molotov cocktail burns stung the steel front door, damage caused by Aimenn Penny, a Neo-Nazi and member of White Lives Matter Ohio who was arrested and later charged by the Feds with a hate crime.

Chester Township Police Chief Craig Young, head of a department with only 15 officers, in the midst of the buildup, released a statement suggesting McMaster call it all off. “It’s about the safety of my officers,” Young said. “It’s about the safety of this community. That recommendation was based 100 percent on that and nothing else.”

But McMaster and crew were not strangers to threats and they cold-shouldered the notion of backing down.

In an interview a few days before, on March 29th, McMaster seemed both surprised by the UCC firebombing and unshaken by its threat. She recalled a memory, at 15, when, as a young president of Fairfield County’s FFA chapter, she was ridiculed for outing herself as a lesbian. No one, she said, stood up to back her up. “Not the school officials, not the other parents—no one! It just reminds me of what we exactly needed to see back then,” she said, her tone intensifying. “That adults are willing to do uncomfortable things, and take on scary fights, to protect people who are vulnerable.”


Vodka, Veranda L’Ni likes to tell people, is her only vice. Not coffee, no. Not beer—she doesn’t drink it. Not harassing strangers, anyone, really. “I’m an introverted extrovert,” she said in April at Edda in Ohio City. “And I’m a quiet driver. I don’t listen to podcasts. I don’t talk on the phone. I’ve always just enjoyed the quiet road. Total silence.”

A realtor during the day, L’Ni eased into drag, like many, after she was lugged to an event at Cocktails, a nondescript gay bar on Cleveland’s west side. It was 2008. Drag, she said, was transitioning into a more democratic, less volatile scene. Finding the experience exhilarating, L’Ni soon found her “drag aunties” and her eventual moniker as Cleveland’s Tallest. (Her name is a Golden Girls homage.)

“I’m the city’s fourth tallest skyscraper—I’m the sparkly one,” L’Ni said, introducing a recent drag brunch at the Music Box Supper Club, a regular gig for her. In a two-hour show where she serves as emcee, N’Li’s character veers between vaudevillian camp and glittery self-deprecation. “Do you like my kitty titties?” she asked the crowd, showing off a lionesque bust. The crowd wooed. L’Ni veered into the political. “People have been doing drag for many years—and now it’s a problem?” she said. “Well, you could just go…” She held back an expletive. “Annnd end scene.”

It’s part of L’Ni’s reluctant foray into activism, especially after she witnessed her first protest, in front of Near West Theatre last August. “It slowly amplified over time,” she said. “I found a way to incorporate Veranda, the character of Veranda, into doing something positive for the community. That was my impetus for doing more.”

Though she’d encountered Proud Boys before and been harassed numerous times, Chardon felt different. In the days before the events, following the UCC firebombing, L’Ni sat in on daily intel calls with McMaster and check-ins with her fellow queens. “Mallory called me. I call Empress [Dupree], Empress calls me,” L’Ni recalled. “It’s, ‘How are you doing? How are you feeling?’ We’re looking at maps. We were looking at all the things to make sure how to get out [safely].”

Empress Dupree, who’s only been performing drag for a little more than a year, felt equally flummoxed. “What happened in Wadsworth this past month really just made everybody a bit nervous,” she said in late March. “I think we are all a little nervous. And I think you have to go in with a little bit more of a defensive attitude when, well, you’re just trying to get in the building.”


Halfway through the Element 41 set that Saturday, McMaster was in her basement bunker scrolling through the latest round of threats and rumors. It’s there, in a tiny living area with pictures of her horses and three kids, where McMaster feels the safest. The week before, she installed a suction lock to her front door, bought a stun gun. It’s here in the bunker where she sits, followed closely by her personal guard Mike Butler, playing a digital chess match with the alt-right extremists who’ve vowed to storm the United Church of Christ.

But near the end of the queens’ brunch set, the protests were relatively calm. Was it the rain? An April Fool’s gag? McMaster isn’t sure. Sitting on her couch, her mind zigzagged: texts to the Chardon police chief, check-in calls with Mendolera, anecdotes about “evangelical Republican” neighbors, checking in on Proud Boy whereabouts. “That’s my horse, Goose,” McMaster said, pointing to a portrait on the wall. “I wanted to bring the drag queens in on him. When I heard the Nazis were coming, I thought I’d need something that could move a little faster.”

Sydney Yahner, McMaster’s assistant, walked downstairs and into the bunker. She held her phone out, concerned.

“The bomb people are here,” Yahner said. Police had found an email claiming an explosive device had been planted in Element 41 that morning. “There’s people out now. Can the performers take a break so that the dogs can come through?”

“Let the chief make the call,” McMaster said. “I’ll send Mike over.”

Mendolera called. “Can you just walk the dog through?” he asked McMaster. He sounded shaken up. “The police said that we would rather not have people there.”

“Tell him I do not want people outside!” McMaster said. “Have him do, like, a walk through the basement. I’m not worried about the interior.”

“They said it’s uncredible. They’re just trying to spook us.”

“Well, if it’s not credible…”

L’Ni calls. She was sitting in Element 41’s green room with the three other queens. “Hey, Mal,” L’Ni said. “Did you hear about the…?”

“The bomb threat—the ‘not’ bomb threat?” McMaster said. “Everyone who came in was wanded. They’re gonna bring in the dog who does explosives.”

“They’re just going to sniff out the basement?” L’Ni asked.

“I said the upstairs is secure because everyone’s been wanded!”

“Okay. Would it all be wise if we just kind of all went upstairs?”

“Maybe move into one room. Or the hallway.”

“No, I just want to be clear. What the best…”

“This is just more of their terrorism. Knowing that we have to take it seriously, but it’s not.” McMaster says, aside, “I didn’t want the queens to panic.”

Mendolera calls again. “Are you coming over!?”

McMaster headed upstairs, out of her office a block down, across the jersey barriers, the dozen police officers and the eight-foot gates, and entered Element 41 as Monica Mod performed “Hopelessly Devoted To You” from Grease. McMcaster ran downstairs, into Element’s long basement, trailing the same path as the bomb dog did before her, knowing that, in one flash of an instant, her hunch could be proven wrong.

“It was a fictitious email!” Mendolera shouted to McMaster in the kitchen, as Monica Mod sang nearby, “Now there’s nowhere to hide / since you pushed my love aside.” “Ow ow!” a woman shouted. Three-quarters of the crowd cheered, holding singles in the air. “Crazy,” Mendolera said, assessing the whole scene. “Absolutely crazy.”


In a surprise to the activists, a relief for the 122 police officers, and a laugh for the pastors, only one single protestor showed up to the Drag Story Hour at UCC later that afternoon. It’s a result that baffles everyone in attendance, and makes the perimeter, the army of police vans, the bomb guys checking undercarriages of cars, somewhat ridiculous. “Hey, maybe they just thought we’d cave in. Or, maybe it was the weather?” Peacock said as L’Ni read The Good Egg to about four dozen parents and their kids sitting in the pews. Peacock grinned. “Rain, after all, melts snowflakes.”

From the left side of the altar, L’Ni invited all the children up to the front to dance to the “Twist Song.” Afterwards, L’Ni took the microphone and commended the crowd for their bravery.

“We can’t thank you enough for your wonderful support, and all the beautiful kids here, all the wonderful families that came out here to say hi—and see a lot of glitter,” she said. Everyone laughed. “This is what we do. This is who we are. And we’re going to keep doing it.”

In the lobby, near the crayon tables and buckets of treats, stood the Washock family, who had come to see drag despite weeks of tension. “The kids and I had a big conversation about it,” Maureen Washock said, standing by her daughters, Addy and Lainey. “That there might be people protesting. That it might be scary.”

Addy, who’s 7 and loves sugar and aims to become an eye doctor one day, looked up, overhearing talk about the alleged protestors.

“I think it’s kind of wrong,” she said. “I feel like people should be able to choose what they want to do.” She paused. “And other people can’t say anything about that.”

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