The Iowa mom who donned a drag queen outfit and verbally ripped into members of Ankeny Community School District said the stunt was designed to spark awareness about inappropriate sexualized content in schools. The protest came after a drag show that happened at Ankeny High School in May.
Footage of the costumed ambush blew up online as the mom had hoped.
On Oct. 3, Kimberly Reicks, 40, founder of parent rights group Iowa Mama Bears, demanded answers regarding the outcome of a school board-led investigation involving the drag show—hosted by the Gay Straight Alliance club—that took place after-hours in the school auditorium.
She and two other parents had complained to the board right after the show. The board responded that the performance was “unauthorized” by the building administration, “did not follow the correct protocols,” and was “currently under investigation.”
“They did not follow up,” Reicks told The Epoch Times. “And that’s why I dressed the way I did, right in front of the school board, 130 days later.”
According to Reicks, certain authorization must have been obtained for the dancers and attendees to gain access to the auditorium, lighting equipment, and sound system; she added that two teachers were in attendance along with several students, including one 12-year-old.
“I as a parent cannot even go into a school and eat lunch with my child without a full background check, but some guy can just walk in the back door without any background checks,” Reicks said. “And because he’s part of the LGBTQ community he somehow is not held to the same standard as I am as a parent with a child.”
(Courtesy of Kimberly Reicks)
She explained that her demonstration was tailored to evoke an emotional response from the school board members, adding that equipment failures were a fixture of previous board meetings where parents wanted to speak. The footage, titled: “A taste of their own medicine Ankeny School board meeting,” was posted on Rumble.
“I wanted them to feel a certain way because I found the tendency to be like: people go on emotions rather than fact,” she told the newspaper. “And that definitely is the reaction I got, and that’s what I wanted. I wanted them to feel like that’s wrong, that’s disgusting, ‘Why is she in here like that?’ Because if they felt [like] that as adults, just imagine what a minor child felt like watching that man, dressed like that, performing the way he did in front of our children.”
Showing up in her regular clothes, Reicks is heard admonishing the board for lacking transparency and calling for an apology and assurance that it won’t happen again. Disrobing, she then revealed the costume underneath, similar to one worn by a male performer in the show.
She further castigated:
“Does this outfit make you turn your head? Does this outfit seem appropriate for anybody here to see? This is what the man dressed like in front of our kids. So if this makes your head spin—if this pisses you off in any way, shape, or form—it should. Because I’m embarrassed to stand here in the outfit that I am in today, but I have a point to prove—that this outfit should not be ever accepted in our schools anywhere.”
She added: “I will do whatever measures I have to, to make sure events like this are addressed and resolved, even if that means wearing the exact same outfit as the 21-year-old drag queen performer to prove my point.”
After the video went viral, Reicks received a swell of media requests and accusations. “I have been swamped, really,” said Reicks. “From Charlie Ward to Newsmax to Fox. I was just on with Michael Knowles.”
The mom of four, who home-schools her three youngest children, now encourages concerned parents to dial up the heat vocalizing their grievances against haughty school boards. “We have to be on top of it, and I always say to parents, like, ‘You need to go to so many school board meetings, go to PTA meetings, go to whatever, you can, do so much of it that they think that you’re on the payroll,” she said.
Parents have gotten increasingly organized in resisting policies promoting transgenderism, inappropriate sexual content, and critical race theory in classrooms across the country. In July, a group of 11 parents served a lawsuit against Loudoun County Public Schools for its policy stifling parents from knowing if their children express different genders at school.
Parent protests were galvanized in May 2021 when a female student was raped by a 15-year-old male in a girl’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County, and later again when state prosecutor Buta Biberaj tried to have the girl’s father jailed for speaking out at a school board meeting.
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