‘Family Friendly’ Pride Event Features Sex Toys And Drag Queen Performances

A “family-friendly” pride event in Rome, Georgia, featured sex toys and explicit performances, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Rome, Georgia, Pride 2022 event was advertised as “family friendly” with a “Pride Kids Zone” that included face painting, a live DJ, hair styling and drag queen story time, according to documents obtained by the DCNF. The event also featured vendors with sex toys and explicit drag queen performances.

Melissa Jackson, chief operations officer of No Left Turn in Education and her colleague attended the pride event to understand what occurred, she told the DCNF.

“Within the vendor area of Heritage Park, which is where the family event took place, they had vendors and food trucks. They had a face painting station for kids. They had a DJ doing a hula hoop contest, a limbo contest with kids and various other booths,” Jackson told the DCNF. “As we were walking through, we noticed two vendor booths selling sexual toys, vibrators, underwear, condoms, stuff like that. That was just shocking to us.”

The Frisky Biscuit and The Love Library, shops that both specialize in the selling of “intimate items,” were vendors at the event, documents obtained by the DCNF showed. The pride event also featured a drag queen show where a child can be seen tipping the performer, according to a Facebook video.

“I asked the lady, ‘don’t you think this is a little bit jacked up? Having sex toys is a kids festival?’ Jackson told the DCNF. “She said ‘I have these things on the back table and I’m like, ‘well, actually, you don’t. They’re on the front table and it doesn’t matter at festival.’ There’s booths and there’s kids running everywhere.”

Jeb Arp, the assistant principal of Garden Lakes Elementary School, in Rome, Georgia, was a sponsor of the event through his real-estate business, the event website states. Arp was a third-tier sponsor of the event as “Jeb Arp Relator.”

“The police and the sheriff, just no action, didn’t seem to be alarmed,” Jackson told the DCNF. “We don’t think that Drag Queen Story Hour is appropriate. It’s not the lifestyle that should be around kids. But the biggest thing, was that the most concrete thing there was sex toys at a child’s event.”

Arp, Frisky Biscuit, The Love Library and Rome Pride did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.