Council apologises to parents after school visit by drag queen
Renfrewshire Council in Scotland has apologised after a drag queen was invited to speak to primary school children.
The drag queen, who uses the stagename 'Flow Job' when entertaining to adults and 'Flow' for speaking engagements with children, visited Glencoats Primary in Paisley with SNP MP Mhairi Black to speak about Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 that prohibited the promotion of homosexuality.
But parents left angry comments on the school and headteacher's Twitter accounts over Flow's explicit social media posts, prompting the accounts to be closed, The Sun reports.
Defending her appearance, Flow wrote on Twitter: "Don't bring your negativity to my profile, I am a drag queen yes who does adult jokes, but I also do under 18 [venues] and cater around children."
In another post, she wrote: "Who would have thought I would of got so much abuse for reading wains [children] a story book?"
She added: "As the drag queen who read the story to the children it was amazing to see what the kids have learned, we live in a time where kids will be going to school with 2 mums/dads or LGBTQ+ family, we are showing them that it's normal."
Black also defended the visit, posting on Twitter: "If my school had invited a gay MP and a drag queen to visit during LGBT History Month, or even acknowledged that LGBT History Month existed, it would have made an immeasurable difference to the difficult childhoods my LGBT classmates and I had."
In an apology following the backlash, Renfrewshire Council said that the visit had been at the invitation of the school's Rainbow Club and that it "would not have been arranged" if the council had been aware of Flow's "stage persona", STV reports.
The statement read: "The school pupils at Glencoats Primary are currently organising a series of activities and events to mark LGBT history month.
"In discussion with pupils in their Rainbow Club, one of their requests was to invite people from the LGBT community to hear about their own experiences growing up and they wanted to invite a drag queen to talk to this group to hear about their own personal experience.
"Learning about values including equalities and diversity has an important role in the school curriculum.
"All school visits are arranged and managed with the wellbeing of pupils first and foremost however it is clear in this case, the social media content associated with the speaker's stage persona is not appropriate for children and had we been aware of this, the visit would not have been arranged. We are sorry for the concern this has caused and are investigating."