Cumberland Council reverses support for drag story time

A western Sydney council has reversed its decision to support potential drag queen story time at its libraries following fierce community backlash.

Cumberland councillor Steve Christou with supporters who oppose drag queen story time despite.

Any proposal to host drag queen story time at its libraries has been quashed after Cumberland Council reversed a decision to support the activity following backlash from a boisterous contingent of the community who packed its meeting on Wednesday.

Just a week earlier, councillors Joseph Rahme and Steve Christou’s motion called on the chamber to reject “drag or sexualised material designed to target children” following Local Government NSW’s push for councils to host more LGBT-inclusive events.

There were no immediate plans to introduce drag story time to Cumberland libraries and the Labor-dominated council rejected the motion, saying it was scare mongering.

This week, before a raucous public gallery which included a Catholic priest opposed to drag story time, independent councillor Rahme blasted Labor councillors for failing to support his motion last week.

“You’re voted to represent your residents, not to follow party lines, not to follow a local government conference and not to follow principles that fly in Marrickville – because Merrylands ain’t Marrickville,’’ he said.

The public gathered before and after the meeting to oppose drag story time.

“My issue is sexualising kids to a certain school of thought at a very young age and making an impression on them when their minds are not fully developed.’’.

Fellow Our Local Community councillor Eddy Sarkis said banning drag story time would protect children.

“If we all went down the trend of listening to trans stories at a young age and having a generation of confused children grow up, where would that leave the future for everybody else?’’

A large throng turned out to voice their outrage over drag story time, despite no immediate plans to host the activity in Cumberland.

Councillor Mohamad Hussein, who changed his stance after voting against the ban last week, told the gallery the council never proposed to introduce drag story time.

“This has been manufactured specifically to upset people in our community,’’ he said.

“This whole thing was a made-up election stunt as usual – a scare campaign to get everyone upset about something that does not and has not ever existed in Cumberland.’’

Cr Christou blasted Ola Hamed for failing the Islamic community, which sparked cheers from the public gallery.

Cr Hamed said councillors Christou and Rahme’s motion lied and was designed to confuse and frighten the community ahead of local government elections in September.

“People here in the gallery tonight, allow me to tell you that I feel you have been misled, you have been lied to with this fear mongering, grandstanding campaign,’’ she said.

When Cr Rahme yelled back that she was a liar the meeting was briefly adjourned.

All councillors except Mayor Lisa Lake and Glenn Elmore agreed to not host drag story time.

Labor councillor Kun Huang was absent from the meeting.

Cr Lake said: “There are a lot of activities that this community does not host but we don’t seem to need a motion to prevent them from occurring.

“I believe that this motion sends a harmful message that they’re not welcome here and that’s not the culture of Cumberland.’’