As the sun was setting on a cold December day in Grand Prairie, the latest escalation in the war on Christmas drag unfolded outside the Texas Trust CU Theater.
A small group of anti-LGTBQ+ protesters gathered there on December 17 to accost attendees and defenders of a Christmas-themed drag show, who they baselessly accused of being “groomers” and “pedophiles.” As the night went on, the initial contingent of bigots were joined by a series of increasingly extreme groups: Christian nationalists, neofascists, and eventually open neo-Nazis who threw up stiff-armed salutes and wore symbols associated with Hitler’s genocidal regime. But they were not unopposed. The right-wing extremists were outnumbered by a community defense coalition, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation and armed members of the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club. Grand Prairie SWAT police were deployed to the scene.
Brooke Lynn Hytes, one of the performers in the Christmas drag show, remarked about the event on Twitter, “If you don’t have 150 armed protesters, and a SWAT team on the roof, outside your show are you even doing Drag?”
