Drag Queen Story Hour U.K. founder suffers antigay attack after proposing to boyfriend

Sebastian Samuel, who helped found Drag Queen Story Hour in the U.K., was attacked along with his partner in Cardiff, Wales, early Sunday morning by men who used homophobic slurs toward them.

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Samuel had asked his boyfriend to marry him just a few hours earlier, PinkNews reports. When the two were walking by a McDonald’s about 3 a.m., two men called them names, he said. He asked them why they were doing that, and the men began beating the couple. Samuel was knocked out and suffered a broken jaw, for which he will need surgery.

“This is the night of my anniversary, it’s the night I proposed to my boyfriend, and I am here crying,” he told PinkNews. “This is not fair, it’s not fair.”

On a Facebook Live video, Samuel said of his injuries, “This is my engagement present from the world. I have a swollen cheek and a bit of a black eye.”

He also feared he had lost the engagement ring he gave his now-fiancé but found it upon returning to the scene. “I spent two hours, give or take, on my knees looking for this because I refuse [to lose] the ring I gave him,” he said.

South Wales police are investigating the attack as a hate crime, they told PinkNews. The investigation is a priority, they said, noting that such assaults have “no place in society.”

Samuel, who performs as drag queen Aida H Dee, has scheduled some events despite the attack. There will be a new set of Drag Queen Story Hours at Regent’s Park in London July 7 and 14, and he is looking forward to returning as Aida, he said in social media posts Monday. He said the shows shouldn’t be “shadowed by hate.”

Early this month, a venue in Liverpool canceled a story hour featuring Samuel after the performer received several threats. “One message threatened to cut me up into pieces and throw me into the river,” he told the city’s Echo newspaper at the time. The venue, Dorothy’s Diner, canceled the event due to fears about the safety of customers, employees, and performers. Sebastian said he would have gone on, however. “It does scare me, but there isn’t a chance in hell that I wouldn’t perform because of the haters or because of threats,” he said.