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- Chicago Tribune
Threats against drag performers are down as LGBTQ opposition shifts focus to transgender and gender-nonconforming people, report says
The emails were dashed off, with the agitated posts on social media garnering hundreds of likes. Protests were promised. Supporters mobilized.
But by the time the drag storytime event for children at the Beverly branch library rolled around Tuesday, the scene looked more like a dance party for families than a volatile clash.
Bubbles floated through the air while drag storytime supporters draped in pride flags cheered on families as they entered the library. Dozens of supporters danced to ABBA's 'Dancing Queen,' easily drowning out the handful of people who showed up to protest.
'We are seeing that the right wing are not showing up in the way that they are saying,' said Asher McMaher, executive director of Trans Up Front IL and an organizer of the counterprotest. 'By the time more people started showing up, people were in the library.'
The scene was a far cry from 2022, when drag events in Illinois were among the most targeted in the country, harassment so intense it forced the owner of a suburban bakery to close down her business after it was vandalized ahead of a highly anticipated, family-friendly sold-out drag show.
Now, three years later, GLAAD, the world's largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, reports that threats against drag performers are down in Illinois. While it's difficult to ascribe it to one cause, the drop may be due to a mix of drag performers working together to ensure the safety of their audiences, and a more prudent approach to which towns and venues are chosen for shows.
Whatever the cause, the downturn mirrors a nationwide trend, where GLAAD says coordinated attacks against drag performers and associated events fell by 55 % between May 1, 2024, and May 1, 2025, compared with the year before.
But with Pride month in full swing, advocates say the threat against the LGBTQ+ community remains. While attacks on drag performers may have decreased, attacks on transgender and gender-nonconforming people are on the rise, according to GLAAD.
Across the country, there were over 932 anti-LGBTQ incidents between May 1, 2024, and May 1 of this year, with 52% of those attacks directed toward transgender and gender-nonconforming people. While the overall number of anti-LGBTQ incidents is down compared with the previous year's data, attacks targeting transgender and gender nonconforming people are up 14% compared with last year. Those include protests, physical assaults and harassment, among other forms of attack.
'Drag has been the entry point for a much bigger agenda,' Channyn Lynne Parker, CEO of Brave Space Alliance, said. 'What starts as targeting drag quickly has become targeting trans people, especially trans women. It's a proxy. So they're not afraid of makeup and wigs. What they're afraid of is gender nonconformity.'
Advocates say they've noticed a shift in anti-LGBTQ attacks from drag shows to transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals is taking place in more public forums, including local government and school board meetings.
'Extremists do get bored in targeting certain groups,' said Sarah Moore, senior editor of news and research for GLAAD. 'You can go back to 2020, 2021 where we saw the conversations around critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, transforming into attacks on drag, trans rights, immigrant rights, Islamophobia. There is always this evolving target of who extremists want to target their hate to.'
Although Illinois is typically considered a safe haven in the Midwest for trans individuals and the broader LGBTQ community, it is not immune to hate from extremists, advocates said. As transgender and gender-nonconforming people start to become more represented in government and mainstream media, Moore said that visibility is also leading to increased attacks.
'We are living in a time where visibility no longer guarantees safety,' Parker said. 'I'm not sure if it ever guaranteed safety, but the climate for LGBTQ people, particularly trans folks and people of color, has become increasingly hostile.'
At Naperville School District 203, some parents are pushing the school board to change its policy over transgender athletes after claims surfaced online that a transgender athlete won a girls junior track meet. The incident prompted Awake Illinois to file a federal Title IX complaint against the district with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. Awake Illinois has previously been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In April, Awake Illinois lodged similar allegations against Valley View District 365-U, which inspired passionate pleas in support of LGBTQ+ youth at a school board meeting for the Bolingbrook-Romeoville district. Chicago Public Schools and Deerfield Public Schools District 109 have also been subject to federal complaints over the past few months.
'I have five children and I've attended more school board meetings in the last two, three months, than in their entire lives,' McMaher said. 'And it's because those who follow the Trump administration have become emboldened to plan all these actions or spew all this hate in a way that they haven't previously, because they feel justified under the federal administration.'
Lifelong Bolingbrook resident Bob Skrezyna said he's been to plenty of school board meetings in his life, but never imagined he would be advocating for his daughter and trans youth like her at his local school district, which he described as a place that is typically welcoming to people like her.
That all changed when Awake Illinois started showing up to meetings at Valley View District 365-U.
'I didn't go looking for a fight,' Skrezyna said. 'It literally came to my kid's school.'
He said that Awake Illinois has since left his district alone and has shifted its focus to Naperville, where Skrezyna has also gone on to advocate for trans students. He never thought he would be going to Naperville meetings to continue his advocacy, but he feels a sense of urgency. Others who heard him speak at the District 365-U school board meetings also encouraged him to speak at Naperville.
'They had to wait until (President Donald Trump) came to power to actually make a move on anybody,' Skrezyna said. 'Most of us had been fighting this fight since our kids were tiny. They're in it just right now because they see an opening. When Trump is gone, the hate is still going to be here. My hope is that if I keep speaking and if other parents like me keep speaking and allies keep speaking, we'll once again be able to drown out that hate.'
While the anti-LGBTQ spotlight may have shifted to transgender people, advocates and experts say the hate they are seeing is not new.
'We're in uncharted territory, at least in our active memories,' Parker said. 'So many folks before us worked so hard for us to not experience this, but here we are. What we're experiencing right now isn't new, but it is recycled.'
Much of the rhetoric in the targeting of trans people is similar to the rhetoric used against drag performers — which is similar to the rhetoric used predominantly against gay men and lesbians in the 1970s, according to University of Chicago professor Andrew Proctor.
Proctor pointed to anti-LGBTQ activist singer Anita Bryant as an example of that. Bryant spearheaded the 'Save Our Children' campaign in Florida's Miami-Dade County in 1977, which successfully overturned an ordinance that granted gay people housing and employment opportunities. Her efforts helped spread the false idea that such protections would allow gay people to prey on children. Bryant's support also helped spur the Briggs Initiative, a failed 1978 proposition in California that sought to ban gay men and lesbians from working in schools.
'Schools have always been a sort of site for these battles, if we're just thinking sort of broadly about LGBTQ politics … I view this as sort of a new iteration of old tactics,' Proctor said, emphasizing how the 'groomer' narrative has now largely shifted from one group in the LGBTQ community to another.
Proctor also noted that one aspect that's relatively new is that the concern is not just with adults, but also with children who are coming out and identifying themselves as queer.
'Children are coming out, teenagers are coming out in school, and that's part of what parents seem to be especially concerned about or trying to censor, along with access to information about gender and sexuality,' Proctor said.
As the summer kicks off with Pride Month underway, McMaher said they expect to see an upswing in attacks toward both drag performers and events designed for transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals. After Tuesday's counterprotests, McMaher said they were notified about several drag storytime events in Chicagoland that were being threatened, including one in Edgewater on Monday.
Regardless, McMaher said they still want people to enjoy pride events.
'In the state of Illinois, even though we are a sanctuary state, that doesn't mean bad things can't happen,' McMaher said. 'When you see something or experience something, report it. Illinois' attorney general has a form for reporting hate crimes. Remember that no matter what, we're not going anywhere as a community and we still deserve to celebrate Pride.'
