Mosaics, the Provo, Utah, bookstore, café, event, and queer community space that opened last October, was the target of a bomb threat on Saturday morning, as reported by multiple local news media. Police were notified and went to the store, where they found "no bombs or suspicious packages" and said that the investigation is continuing.
The threat was sent in an e-mail to several news organizations at about 9 a.m., shortly before a scheduled drag queen storytime was to take place. According to the Daily Herald, the message called the booksellers "degenerates" and "groomers... acting out your sexual (fantasies) upon our children sheathed under the false guise of tolerance and inclusivity.... We will not stand idly by as the next generation of children are preyed upon and corrupted, we will stop you and we will kill you." The message ended saying that "bombs will go off" at Mosaics.
Drag artist Tara Lipsyncki, who owns the store with her husband, told ABC 4 News that the store has been threatened before and said, "To those that keep doing these threats, you are threatening children. You are the villain. You are taking public resources--with the police and everyone else--and squandering it. So you are the problem and you need to address that with yourself and stop projecting it on the rest of us."
And she told the Daily Herald, "I need to make sure that my family--both my biological family and physical family, and my chosen family of my employees and the community that I've built in the store--I need to make sure they're safe."
The store posted on Facebook: "Thank you ABC 4 News for coming to Provo to speak to us. Mosaics will be issuing a stronger statement in the next few days. In the meantime, we ask Provo Police Department to take this threat seriously and pursue an active and meaningful investigation to find the individual(s) responsible."
Last September, the King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City cancelled a drag queen storytime after a pair of bomb threats. That event would have starred Lipsyncki.