Over 200 allies drown out deranged activists protesting against queer youth

Roughly a dozen anti-LGBTQ+ activists associated with Moms for Liberty protested against the Rainbow Room, an LGBTQ+ youth support group in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. However, the small group was vastly outnumbered by 200 counter-protestors who gathered in support of the queer youth support group.

Last Wednesday, Canadian anti-LGBTQ+ activist Chris Elston (also known as “Billboard Chris”), asked his Twitter followers to help him protest the youth group’s weekly meeting at Salem Church.

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A whopping 12 or so people attended.

Elston called the event, which is open to people ages 14 to 21, a “youth indoctrination event” and “groomer central,” a slur accusing queer people and allies of child sexual abuse. He was invited to protest the event by local Moms for Liberty activist Megan Brock, according to the Bucks County Beacon. Brock and Elston particularly took issue with the Rainbow Room offering sex education sessions and a queer prom.

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Elston showed up wearing a sandwich board that proclaimed, “Children cannot consent to puberty blockers.” He also recorded his presence with a selfie stick, asking others, “Can anybody tell me why we should be cutting off the body parts of children?”

However, the Salem Church has recruited 18 volunteer peacekeepers in anticipation of Elston’s protest. They and nearly 200 counter-protesters mostly ignored Elston and his fellow demonstrators while protecting the 25 young people who attended the meeting.

The counter-protesters created “an atmosphere of celebration and welcoming” by holding a “cookout with hot dogs, music, bubbles,” the aforementioned outlet mentioned. Counter-protester Kim Barbaro told the Beacon that Elston, who shares videos of his arguments with pro-LGBTQ+ allies online, had no one willing to engage with him.

“There were chalk drawings on the way up and words of support and love and lots of beautiful rainbow flags. The event itself was so uneventful for him that [Elston] had to go outside of the event,” Barbaro said.

State Sen. Steve Santarsiero (D) said the size of the counter-protesting crowd “[sent] a message of hope that we have a bright future ahead where everyone is accepted and everyone is included.”

He said of Elston and Moms for Liberty, “This is not just some random group of people who have decided that they’re going to come out and speak their minds. They want to try to influence the school board races this year, they want to try to influence the county races. These are politically motivated people.”

Santarsiero’s comment references the fact that Moms for Liberty, a group that opposes any acknowledgment of LGBTQ+ identities in schools, has tried to undermine LGBTQ+-inclusive policies in the Bucks County School District. This effort has been aided by Chaya Raichik, who goes by “Libs of Tik Tok” on Twitter.

When asked about his thoughts on queer youth, Elston replied, “There’s no such thing as a queer kid, OK? They’re just kids. Queer theory is this radical left ideology that wants to take everything that we’ve considered normal and traditional and destroy that, and take everything that’s depraved and perverted and normalize that instead.”