The Swedish Inheritance Fund, which manages the wealth of deceased Swedes with no heirs, will be using the money of dead Swedes to fund drag queen shows.
The state agency announced it would be giving 1,710,500 Swedish Krona (£138,656/$177,774) to the MUMS Cultural Association in Stockholm to “develop available normative creative fairy tales in the form of feature shows”, according to their website.
The shows in question will involve the group Among Dragons and Drag Queens, which will create “new fairy tales” to whichever group is being targetted at the time. The project will also involve “drag show workshops” in which participants will be able to perform their own drag shows with the project to be presented at local libraries.
On its website, the MUMS cultural association describes itself as “a politically independent association that wants to broaden the cultural offerings in Sweden with a special aim to work for LGBT issues, diversity, and equality”.
At the end of October, Among Dragons and Drag Queens even did a library drag storytime event for newly arrived migrant children. They said in a press release: “It was a little extra magical since most of the children could not speak Swedish. With the help of colours, glitter, costume transformations, and repetition of the words, all the children could follow the stories.”
So-called “drag queen story hour” events, mainly hosted in public libraries, have spread across multiple countries in the west, including Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
The events have not been without criticism due to the potential for sex offenders to take part in the activities, as was the case in Houston, Texas, where a registered sex offender was allowed to participate.
In Dallas, another drag queen event stirred controversy when it was revealed that one of the drag queens was reading a story entitled What Colour is Your Underwear? to young children.
The Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon, went as far as deleting pictures of drag queens with small children laying on top of them after a backlash when the images were posted on social media.