Details of the mass shooting in Colorado Springs continue to come in as authorities try to determine the shooter's motive. One thing is clear, however: Christofascist, neo-Nazi groups and, of course Republican legisators and candidates have all been ramping up anti-LGBT hysteria and disseminating old lies about gays being a threat to children and youths while calling supporters of LGBT rights "groomers" putting children at risk. Sadly, many of these politicians know what they are doing but put pandering to the ugly party base ahead of the lies and safety of other citizens. Meanwhile, the number of anti-gay bills being introduced - 320 last year - has exploded. Regardless of the shooter's motive when known, an atmosphere encouraging anti-LGBT violence is being encouraged and expanded. Some of these same Republican legisators who have been fanning anti-LGBT hatred have mouthed disingenuous sympathy for the shooting victims, yet continue their poisonous rhetoric and/or introduce more anti-gay and anti-transgender bills. A piece in the Washington Post looks at this frightening phenomenon. Here are highlights:
In the hours after the shooting, investigators did not say what led someone to open fire Saturday night in a Colorado gay bar, killing at least five people and injuring 25 others. But LGBTQ advocates across the country believe a surge of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and laws is at least partially to blame.
“When politicians and pundits keep perpetuating tropes, insults, and misinformation about the trans and LGBTQ+ community, this is a result,” Colorado Rep. Brianna Titone (D) tweeted Sunday.
Titone, Colorado’s first openly trans legislator, and the chair of the state’s LGBTQ legislative caucus, said anti-LGBTQ lawmakers, including one of her colleagues, have used hateful rhetoric to directly incite attacks against LGBTQ people.
[A]n independent analysis by the research group Crowd Counting Consortium shows that right-wing demonstrators have increasingly mobilized over the past year against the LGBTQ community.
Already this year, armed protesters and right-wing groups such as the Proud Boys have used intimidating tactics to disrupt drag-related events in Texas, Nevada and Oregon, as well as other states. Children’s hospitals across the United States are facing growing threats of violence, including bomb threats, driven by an online anti-LGBTQ campaign attacking the facilities for providing care to transgender kids and teens. And in October, a man attacked a transgender librarian in Idaho before yelling homophobic slurs and attempting to hit two women with his car.
Jay Brown, senior vice president of programs, research and training for the Human Rights Campaign, said Americans can’t, and shouldn’t, separate those acts of violence from state-sanctioned efforts to limit LGBTQ rights.
“We’ve seen more than 340 anti-LGBTQ bills filed this year alone,” Brown said. “We’ve seen a huge increase in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric online and by politicians, and we’ve seen real threats.”
In Colorado, for instance, Brown noted that Republican lawmaker and gun-rights activist Lauren Boebert has criticized drag in recent months, and in August, she warned “all the drag queens out there” to “stay away from the children in Colorado’s Third District!” Boebert has used slurs to describe transgender people, and she called the Equality Act gay “supremacy.” She also helped promote the idea that people who support LGBTQ adolescents are “groomers.”
“The level of fear that the community is feeling is real,” Brown said. “And many of our elected leaders actually bear some responsibility for creating a level of discourse that feeds that fear.”
On Sunday evening, Boebert expressed sympathy for the victims. . . . Other lawmakers, including Titone and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said Boebert’s words were disingenuous.
“You spreading tropes and insults contributed to the hatred for us,” Titone tweeted. “There’s blood on your hands.”
According to Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of the National Center of Transgender Equality, a quarter of those violent [transgender] deaths happened in Texas and Florida. Those states have proposed dozens of anti-trans laws and regulations in the past two years or put in place anti-trans policies, such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide gender-affirming care for their children.
“Anti-trans legislation, fearmongering, and disinformation put the trans community and trans lives at risk,” Heng-Lehtinen tweeted.
Though Colorado has long been one of the country’s most LGBTQ-friendly states, recent attacks have escalated to a point where advocates say no place feels safe. Right-wing groups have, in fact, increasingly turned their attention toward liberal states. . . . “Every trans person who follows this has been warning this would happen. And here we are.”
Jessie Entwistle, of Colorado Springs, who was also at the vigil said he was in Orlando not long after the 2016 massacre at the Pulse night club, “so this all feels very familiar in a really sad way.”
“It feels like, ‘When is it going to happen to me?’ As opposed to thinking, ‘This kind of thing will never touch me.’ ”
I suspect every LGBT American who has frequented gay clubs is thinking to themself "that could have been me."
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