A nonbinary gunman named Anderson Lee Aldrich killed 5 people and injured 25 others at Club Q, a popular LGBTQ+ club in Colorado on November 19. While their motives for the shooting remain unclear, they were previously arrested for bomb threats last year, highlighting Colorado law enforcement’s failure to apply their red flag law. It was also discovered in an interview with Aldrich’s father, Aaron Brink, that he expressed how he praised the shooter for being violent while raising them and expressed a strong stance against LGBTQ+ people as a conservative Mormon.
Many are mourning for the victims of the tragic events at Club Q, which was a safe space and haven for the LGBTQ+ community in Colorado — a state formerly notable for its stance against gay rights until it recently became more progressive as the population grew.
Some individuals, like conservative politicians or religious influencers, are posting their grievances while carrying a long history of hatred and bigotry towards the LGBTQ+ community.
A perfect example of this is Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who conveyed her prayers to the victims and their families through Twitter on the day of the shooting. She has been strongly criticized for this as she holds a long history of being against same-sex marriage and continues to fight against LGBTQ+ policies in legislation — especially those that would support transgender individuals. Boebert’s own Twitter history reveals how outspoken she is against the community, with one particular Tweet reading, “Take your children to CHURCH, not drag bars.”
Many other conservative politicians use their power to undermine the LGBTQ+ community, which they justify through religious ideals. Hypocrisy like this reveals how the shooting at Club Q was encouraged by the influence of people like Boebert. Their outspoken social media posts spread their bigoted thoughts to others like a disease. These politicians may not be the ones holding the gun, but they hide their hatred behind religion and motivate the ones who do.
While the violence that occurred at Club Q is not a new occurrence in the community, it certainly unveils the increasingly dangerous reality of being queer in America. The William’s Institute at UCLA School of Law conducted a study that found that LGBTQ+ individuals are four times more likely to experience violent victimization than non-LGBTQ+ persons. It should be noted that at least 32 transgender and gender non-conforming people have been killed since the beginning of 2022 in the U.S. according to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
The LGBTQ+ community in America has historically suffered because of the U.S. government’s failure to protect them from harm. Before current conservatives’ harmful rhetoric was damaging the community, the AIDS pandemic that occurred in the ‘80s decimated an entire generation of gay men, as 10% of the 1.6 million gay men from ages 25-44 had died by 1995. Former President Ronald Reagan is responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths from the AIDS pandemic as he failed to address it, leading to a dark time in LGBTQ+ history.
The U.S. government has learned nothing from the past as the countless number of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that has been passed is directly responsible for the violence against the community. The politicians pushing these harmful laws in America, like Boebert, promote brutality against the LGBTQ+ community. They argue that drag queens are groomers, transgender athletes are taking careers away, queer people are pedophiles and more in order to enact laws that ban transgender athletes from competing or vote against measures to protect the community from violence as well.
For Boebert to think that she and her colleagues’ harmful rhetoric on the LGBTQ+ community are not doing any harm is ignorant and hypocritical. The lives of a community that just want to exist as themselves and love whoever they want should not be persecuted by any means — especially under lies that are disguised as religious truths.
To truly commemorate the lives lost in the Club Q shooting and in the past, those in power need to face accountability. The rhetoric of conservative politicians has sculpted people so full of hate that they killed others in what they believe to be the name of God. If they don’t have the self-awareness to do better, then everyone, not just the LGBTQ+ community, has to fight so that hateful people like them never hold a position of power again.
Skylar Paxton is an Opinion Intern for the fall 2022 quarter. She can be reached at paxtons@uci.edu.