The Club Q Shooting Was Preventable, But In The End, Inevitable
Do not treat this tragedy as an exception. If things don't change, it will increasingly become the expectation.
It’s been a heavy week coping with the news of the Club Q shooting that killed five and injured 18 more. Colorado Springs is a very conservative place — home to Focus on the Family — making it easy to feel the violation of a this essential LGBTQ+ sanctuary.
Unfortunately, I believe this kind of violence was inevitable. The escalations we’ve seen of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric over the last year have largely gone unchallenged. Many mainstream media outlets have even elevated the skepticism and fear our opponents keep spreading. The more queer people are painted as a threat to children, the more likely it was someone was going to feel compelled to take matters into their own violent hands.
I tried to synthesize these thoughts this week in a column at Xtra that highlights not only the rhetoric that led up to this tragedy, but that opponents doubled down on afterward. They clearly don’t care that they are inspiring violence, and some even seem to be celebrating it. What will we do to prevent the next shooting?
Here’s an excerpt from my column:
When there’s this much fear and demonization being pumped into the ecosystem, it is inevitable that people are going to see violence as a reasonable response and take action into their own hands. There’s a term for this kind of connection between rhetoric and violence: stochastic terrorism. The shooting Saturday night is exactly the kind of stochastic terrorism so many of us have been warning about.
The more damning evidence for how these anti-LGBTQ2S+ forces are committed to fomenting violence can be seen in how they responded after the shooting. Chaya Raichik (aka @LibsofTikTok) wasted no time Sunday morning targeting a Colorado drag organization as a threat to children. Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old who detransitioned and whom the anti-trans movement has turned into a celebrity for their movement, blamed trans people for the rights they seek inviting violence against other members of the queer community. Right-wing columnist Matt Walsh doubled down on condemning the LGBTQ2S+ community as “evil,” “despicable scumbags” and “soulless demons.”
The Republican Party was just as eager to resume attacks on trans people. On Monday, Herschel Walker, who is running for the U.S. Senate in a runoff election in Georgia, released a new ad squarely targeted at trans athletes. This is despite the fact that a survey of Republican midterm voters found that attacking trans people was one of the least motivating factors for supporting the party. Republicans are doubling down anyway.
Conservative organizations, which one might think would be a bit more sensitive or at least less candid in the wake of such a tragedy, didn’t fare much better. Alliance Defending Freedom just plowed ahead with PR for its Supreme Court case (303 Creative v. Elenis) trying to overturn Colorado’s non-discrimination protections so that business owners can refuse service to same-sex couples. The Heritage Foundation was similarly insisting Sunday that Congress must amend the Respect for Marriage Act to ensure there are never any consequences for anyone discriminating against same-sex couples. Focus on the Family, which is based in Colorado Springs, at least acknowledged the shooting, but took no responsibility for fostering “evil and wickedness inside the human heart” with their anti-LGBTQ2s+ campaigns.
I hope you’ll read and share it as you’re able. And I hope we can all do more to squelch the harmful rhetoric and celebrate the joys of being queer: the freedom trans people find when they can be themselves, the uniquely queer artistry of drag, the loving same-sex couples raising children, and a world in which kids learn that no matter who they are, they can be celebrated for it.
Unfortunately, we’re a long ways off.
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Until next time, stay platinum.