Nevertheless, Christine H. Doherty, who serves as the director of operations for the right-wing group Super Happy Fun America according to her Facebook profile, was happy to claim responsibility for the original protest and subsequent cancellation of drag story hour, although she didn’t mention the bomb threat.
“I am thrilled to announce that the Drag Queen Story Hour for Children ages 4-8 event at the Somerville Public Library was CANCELLED!! VICTORY!!” Doherty wrote in a now-unavailable Facebook post, as reported by the Globe. “Thank you to my three Super Happy Fun America sisters and one surprise guest for actually showing up to protest with me.”
Based in Massachusetts, Super Happy Fun America is known for organizing its inaugural event, the now-infamous Boston “straight Pride parade,” back in 2019. At the time, the event’s key trio of organizers — Chris Bartley, John Hugo, and Mark Sahady — were linked to Resist Marxism, a far-right group with ties to white supremacist organizations. According to Super Happy Fun America’s website, the organization focuses on “defending the Constitution, opposing gender madness, and defeating cultural Marxism.”
At the time of writing, the identity of the person who made the bomb threat against Somerville Library is still unknown. Unfortunately, these kinds of anti-LGBTQ+ threats of violence aren’t anything new. In October 2023, a Vice investigation found that at least 11 schools across the U.S. received bomb threats within days of being targeted by Chaya Raichik and her right-wing group “Libs of TikTok.” Meanwhile, in June 2022, far-right extremists raided a California library’s drag queen story hour and began harassing children at the event. Right-wingers can crow about protecting kids all they want, but in the meantime, their efforts seem to be the only ones actually posing a tangible threat to public safety.
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