The president of a California Moms for Liberty chapter went viral this week after a video surfaced of her freaking out at a drag queen in the lobby of a hotel.
Beth Bourne, president of the Yolo County chapter of the right-wing group, was staying at the Alohilani Resort Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, Hawaii when she spotted the group of performers. Among them was Marina Del Rey, a local Hawaiian who was slated to perform for a Drag Brunch event at the resort.
Del Rey began recording Bourne who, shakily recording herself, berated the group, calling their outfits “degrading” and insinuating they were misogynistic.
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“Are you in the hotel? Are you dressed up? Are you a man? Are you a man pretending to be a woman?” Bourne frantically fired off questions at the queens. “What do you think about my son, who might think that he can put on makeup and put on fancy clothing and high heels and have his penis cut off and take estrogen so he can grow fake boobs like those?”
Bourne added, “I paid to be a customer at a hotel where I thought you believed that women were real.”
As hotel staff attempt to escort her out, Bourne cries for the police to come.
Her cries for the police are answered shortly after when they arrived at the hotel to escort her from the property, according to a pair of social media posts made by Del Rey and Bourne after the bizarre incident.
“I’m not here to figure her out, incite hate against her, or call her names —I’m here to remind you, many meet worse daily, the ugliness of this happens without regard to where, why, how etc….Even in the lobby of your hotel,” Del Rey wrote in her post.
Bourne posted her side of the interaction, as well as her interaction with the police afterwards, to her X account.
“I am not okay with children being exposed to drag queens,” she wrote. “Several other Alohilani hotel guests told me they also found it offensive so I spoke up to the manager yesterday.
“I was briefly detained by @honolulupolice, refunded my hotel charges, and have no regrets for speaking up.”
Bourne, who is a program manager of UC Davis’ Institute of Transportation Studies, was condemned by her university in a statement on Tuesday.
“We are aware of a widely circulated video in which a university employee makes a number of offensive statements,” the university wrote in the statement. “We condemn these statements as deeply hurtful. While the employee’s comments are protected by the First Amendment, they do not reflect the values of respect and belonging that form the foundation of our campus community.”
