Anti-LGBTQ groups sue Louisiana officials for allowing “Drag Queen Story Time” at local library
Groups allege that the event violates the Establishment Clause and endorses the religion of "secular humanism"
Two national anti-LGBTQ groups are suing a public library in Louisiana for hosting a planned “Drag Queen Story Time” event on Oct. 6, claiming that by endorsing the event, the library is discriminating against Christians.
The groups, Warriors for Christ and Special Forces of Liberty claim that the event, in which drag queens from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette’s Delta Lambda Phi chapter will read aloud children’s books at the Lafayette Public Library, constitutes an endorsement of a religion: secular humanism.
The lawsuit claims that the drag queens, who it erroneously refers to as transgender, “are proactively seeking to erode community standards of decency and entangle the government with their narrow, shallow, and exclusive religious worldview.”
“The Plaintiffs object to self-identified transgenders exploiting the state’s endorsement of their religious ideology in a government endorsed effort to brainwash and indoctrinate minors to a religious worldviews on sex, faith, truth, gender, morality, and marriage in a manner that excessively entangles the government with the religion of postmodern-western-individualistic-moral relativism,” the lawsuit reads.
Because Warriors for Christ and Special Forces of Liberty claim that being transgender is a specific religious belief, hosting an event that promotes “transgenderism” violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and relegates Christians (and those who oppose LGBTQ rights) to “second-class citizens.”
As part of its lawsuit, the group is also suing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D), Attorney General Jeff Landry (R), Red River Parish Clerk Stuart Shaw, and Lafayette Mayor Joel Robideaux for allowing the Lafayette Public Library to host such an event. The lawsuit originally named Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski as a defendant, but has since been amended to include Robideaux instead. Roswarski is the mayor of Lafayette, Indiana.
The person who filed the suit, Mark Christopher Sevier, also known as Chris, who identifies himself as a “member of the de facto Attorney Generals (sic), member of the Special Forces of Liberty, and self-identified objectophile,” has previously sued Alabama, Texas, Utah, Florida, and Colorado to have his marriage to his computer, which he claims to have married in New Mexico, legally recognized. The lawsuits were an attempt to challenge the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
The Louisiana lawsuit is identical to several others filed in multiple states by Warriors for Christ and Special Forces of Liberty, which make several arguments against the legalization of gay marriage and the condoning of transgenderism.
The lawsuit asks the court to take 29 actions in addition to stopping the story time event, such as declaring all forms of non-heterosexual marriage and any “self-asserted sex-based identity narratives” as part of the religion of secular humanism, and declaring that being LGBTQ is a form of “unproven faith-based assumptions and naked assertions” that are religious in nature.
The lawsuit also asks the court forbid the state of Louisiana and city of Lafayette from ever enacting pro-LGBTQ ordinances or policies, as they “lead to Christian persecution,” declare that the rainbow flag is a religious symbol of secular humanism, and declare that all non-heterosexual marriages are “not part of American heritage and tradition.”
Sevier has also asked the court to find him “in good standing” to appear in court and argue on behalf of the plaintiffs, “since the Tennessee Supreme Court transferred his status to inactive due to mental incapacity through fraud.” He claims that his status as a practicing lawyer was transferred to inactive status due to disability in 2011 after he tried to “expose the corruption of the Tennessee ethics commission” and their “immense animus towards non-observers of the religion of secular humanism.”
Sevier previously sued computer giant Apple in 2013, claiming that his mistyping of a URL led to a pornography addiction, and that the company’s lack of filters on its devices was undermining marriages, including his own, according to the Huffington Post.
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