Parents halt lurid Drag Queen invasion in their town

Illinois MassResistance parents halt months-long lurid “Drag Queen” invasion in their town. Overcame pressure from Governor, State Rep, and ACLU.

Parents also faced cowardly and dishonest local officials.

The power of regular people who didn’t give up!

July 14, 2023
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The pro-LGBT UpRising bakery in Lake of the Hills, IL decided to become a Drag Queen emporium with children. It didn't last long!

Lake of the Hills, Illinois is a fairly quiet and relatively conservative village located northwest of Chicago. As we have reported previously, the LGBT movement has begun going into those towns to subvert the area’s local culture by publicly “normalizing” the homosexual and transgender sexual agenda.

A woman who describes herself as a “queer activist” had opened a bakery named “Uprising Bakery” in a strip mall in the town. In June 2022, she began advertising that her bakery would be hosting Drag Queen shows in the evenings for the public to attend beginning July 23 – and children specifically were welcomed. “Get your dollar bills ready!” was part of the advertisement – and that clearly implied lewd adult entertainment.

Parents in Lake of the Hills were outraged and upset. They began protesting every day near the strip mall entrance. Their message was simple: They demanded that there be no “Drag Queen” events involving children.

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Parents protesting outside the "Drag Show" bakery. People in town got the message!

The leaders of the group contacted MassResistance, and their group soon became an Illinois MassResistance chapter.

At the bakery’s Drag Queen shows

Some parents attended a few of the Drag Queen shows at the bakery. What they saw was ghastly: a celebration of a sexual fetish. The Drag Queens were weird men in women’s clothes prancing around and dancing suggestively, using a lot of four-letter words and other profane language. There were strange-looking adults and innocent-looking children in attendance.

The parents took photos and videos, which they posted on social media and sent to the village public officials. In one of the videos, a little boy can be heard saying, “I don’t think I should be here.”

Liquor was also being served. The bakery had somehow gotten a liquor license, and according to one of the parents, was cited at one point for serving liquor to a minor.

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These two men were part of that evening's show.
How would a child react to this man?
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A child hands this man a dollar bill while another child (face blocked) sits nearby.

The problems were not only inside the bakery but also outside. There were very strange people walking through the parking lot area.

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This was probably a man.

A “violent hate crime” – and the Governor gets involved

The night before the first Drag Queen show, someone came and broke some of the windows at the Uprising Bakery and sprayed “hateful messages” on the wall. A man was soon arrested. The man had driven to Lake of the Hills from a suburb south of Chicago and allegedly had “Proud Boys” literature openly in his car. None of the parents had any idea who he was. It’s widely suspected to be a “false-flag” operation conducted by the Left – a frequently deployed tactic.

But this ignited the “anti-LGBT hate crime” hysteria. A few days later, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and the region’s State Representative visited the bakery and made speeches about “the rising tide of hate against our LGBTQ+ neighbors and friends.”

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Illinois Gov. Pritzker does a photo-op at the board covering the broken window. This photo appeared in several newspapers.

Violation of zoning laws – and the ACLU

In most places, the local zoning laws do not allow a bakery in a strip mall to have adult entertainment.

The Lake in the Hills officials immediately realized that problem. On July 30, the village sent out a press release and notified the bakery owner that her business is “conducting activities that it is not permitted to conduct” under the zoning laws.

But later that same day, the Chicago chapter of the far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a letter to the Village accusing them of “unconstitutional retaliation against Uprising Bakery,” claiming that the Drag shows are not “entertainment events” and not a violation of the zoning laws.

The village officials were clearly rattled by that. This led to a Zoom meeting between the ACLU lawyers and the local officials with their legal counsel. Basically, the Lake of the Woods officials completely backed down and came up with a shameful, contorted line of reasoning of how the bakery was actually in compliance with the law. Basically, they stated that the Drag shows were not “entertainment” and were not “adult-oriented” but instead were “family-friendly.”

Outrage at their elected officials

The village officials’ reasoning defied normal observation and logic, and the people were fuming that their officials were acting so cowardly and dishonestly. They filled the village board meetings, but the officials just continued to repeat their talking points – or else just ignore the parents.

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The village officials were certainly not used to seeing this many angry constituents pack into their meeting!

The parents even found a lawyer who would file a zoning complaint for free against the town. But they needed a business owner or resident who lived within a few blocks of the bakery to join in the suit. The parents went door to door but no one would do it. They were all afraid of retribution by LGBT activists.

The bakery gives up on Drag Queen shows

The parents continued their daily protests outside the strip mall. And people in the community continued to voice their outrage against a bakery whose real purpose seemed to be to push perversion on the community, including innocent children.

Finally, the bakery gave up. The owner announced that their Dec. 24 Drag Queen show would be for adults only, no children allowed. At that point, the parents stopped their protests. But the Dec. 24 show got moved to Dec. 31, 2022. There was a small turnout. And it was the last Drag Queen event they held. The parents won!

Goes out of business

As 2023 began, the Uprising Bakery was struggling. A big problem was that they really hadn’t been a serious bakery. Their products were sub-par – even according to their pro-LGBT friends. They also had trouble keeping staff. And many in the community continued boycotting them.

The owner turned to GoFundMe for help paying the bills. She would rant on social media about “hate” and “violence” being generated against her business, though there was no actual proof. She raised over $50,000 from across the country. But that was not enough. On May 31, the Uprising Bakery closed for good.

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Final thoughts

This is a story about parents who refused to give up. Some people might say, “Who cares what a private business does? Just forget about it.” That’s what the Left wants you to think. But this affected the community in a very bad way.

As everyone knows, when a private business is doing something pro-family that the Left doesn’t approve of, they react with unrestrained viciousness. (Just ask Mike Lindell!) Compare that to our side, which reacts firmly and on principle – but remains reasonable and civilized.