By Farrah Tomazin
First came the carnage, then came the vitriol. As a shattered community in Colorado Springs grieved the victims of last month’s mass shooting at gay hotspot Club Q, it didn’t take long for the condolences to be offset by hundreds of hateful, homophobic messages.
People attend a candlelight vigil on November 21 following a mass shooting at a nearby gay bar in Colorado Springs.Credit:AP
“The shooter was doing God’s work: five less faggots,” said one.
“I hope more shootings happen. Have a blessed day!” said another.
Club Q founder Matthew Haynes was saddened but hardly surprised as he saw the comments flash up on his screen. After all, LGBTQ people represent about 7 per cent of the US population, but make up 20 per cent of the nation’s hate crimes, according to the latest FBI data.
As a congressional hearing in Washington was told this month, the horrific attack that killed five people in Colorado Springs was merely emblematic of a growing trend of anti-LGBTQ extremism, fuelled by a rise in hostile public rhetoric – on social media, among right-wing commentators or by politicians attempting to rile up their base.
Coupled with access to military-style assault weapons, Haynes said, “we were lucky that night that the casualties were not much higher.”
Demonstrators gather on the step of the Montana State Capitol in 2021 after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance two bills targeting transgender youth despite overwhelming testimony opposing the measures.Credit:Independent Record
According to tracking data by LGBTQ lobby group GLAAD, more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills have been considered by state legislatures this year – from blocking trans participation in sports, to barring access to gender-affirming care, to removing books about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Among the most high profile has been Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws, enshrined by Donald Trump’s Republican rival Ron Desantis, which bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through to the third grade.
Reverend Paula Stecker of the Christ the King Lutheran Church stands in front of a memorial set up outside Club Q. Credit:AP
Twenty children’s hospitals that provide trans medical care to minors have also received bomb threats – prompting calls by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association for the Justice Department to intervene – and nearly 150 attacks on LGBTQ events have been reported publicly.
In Oklahoma last month, for instance, a doughnut shop was firebombed with a Molotov cocktail after hosting a drag event – its second attack in less than two months.
In Texas, an inclusive church’s drag bingo night was mobbed by hundreds of far-right extremists in September after Trump ally Steve Bannon amplified a call for the event to be protested.
And in Massachusetts, a man was charged two weeks ago for making a death threat against a physician who cares for gender-nonconforming children.
Both sides of politics accept that violence is a growing concern. About 7300 hate crimes were reported to the FBI in 2021, including nearly 1400 offences targeting LGBTQ people. However, due to under-reporting, varying definitions of hate crimes in different states and the patchy nature of the FBI’s hate crime data in general, these figures are widely accepted to be far worse.
But what both sides can’t agree on is what should be done about it. Republicans blame Democrats for “soft on crime” policies, particularly the push by some progressives to “defund the police” – a contentious slogan used to remove funds from police departments and reallocate them to other forms of public safety and community support, such as mental health services, youth services, housing and education.
They have also highlighted violent attacks by the left: such as the Bernie Sanders supporter who shot Republican whip Steve Scalise in 2017, or the dozens of church organisations attacked after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn federal abortion rights in June.
“It’s easier to blame Republicans than have a serious discussion about the rise of violent crimes across the nation,” says deputy chair James Comer.
Nonetheless, new research by the Human Rights Campaign has thrown the spotlight on the correlation between hostile public rhetoric, largely fuelled on social media, and the rise in violent attacks.
A report released last week identified 24 different hospitals and providers across 21 states who were directly attacked online after inflammatory and misleading posts from provocative right-wing accounts. These attacks took place between August and November alone.
One example occurred when the social media account “Libs of TikTok”, run by conservative activist Chaya Raichik, claimed that the Boston Children’s Hospital’s gender unit was performing hysterectomies on transgender minors.
The hospital in turn received a series of bomb threats, the most recent taking place on November 16, which forced staff and patients into temporary lockdowns and evacuations.
Over the five days following the initial “Libs of TikTok” post, the group tweeted or retweeted more than a dozen posts about the hospital, saying that it “needs to be shut down” while thousands of followers began their own attacks on the hospital’s social media accounts. Some called for doctors to be “put in camps”, subjected to “Nuremberg type trials and punishments” and accused doctors of being paedophiles or “groomers”.
Another example took place on September 21 when Tennessee’s Governor and Attorney General called for an investigation into Vanderbilt University’s Transgender Health Clinic 24 hours after Matt Walsh, a conservative commentator working for the alt-right media company The Daily Wire, tweeted that the clinic would “castrate, sterilise, and mutilate minors.”
It didn’t take long for the violent threats to emerge. “The doctors that perform these surgeries should have their families slaughtered while they’re forced to watch,” said one of the many posts in response.
Kelley Robinson, the incoming director of the HRC, warned that without guidelines governing social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, “this cycle will viciously continue.” And according to the group, hate speech could proliferate under new Twitter owner Elon Musk, who has reinstated dozens of previously banned accounts.
“Already, the frequency of tweets using anti-LGBTQ+ slurs on Twitter is up by around 60 per cent,” the report says.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist”.Credit:FDC
But other interventions are also needed, Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. This included more police, more support for state and local prosecutors in forming specialised hate crimes bureaus, and tougher state and federal hate crime penalties.
Lehman, who specialises in policing and public safety, also cited data showing hate crime offenders tend to look similar to non-hate crime offenders when it comes to the frequency of prior offences.
The Club Q shooter, for example, had previously been arrested for making violent threats against their own mother, but the case was dismissed because the family refuse to cooperate.
Had prosecutors succeeded in getting them to cooperate, or effectively used Colorado’s red flag laws (which are meant to result in guns being confiscated by people deemed to be at risk themselves or others) “five people might still be alive,” Lehman says.
Back in Colorado Springs, Club Q bartender Matthew Anderson, 25, is also hoping for change, warning that more people would die until politicians finally banned assault weapons in the US.
Photographs of victims of a mass shooting at a gay nightclub are displayed at a memorial on November 22 in Colorado.Credit:AP
Last month, he watched in horror as a gunman walked into his safe haven and opened fire. That gunman, Anderson Lee Aldrich has since been charged with 305 crimes, including first-degree murder, attempted murder and “bias-motivated” offences.
But as Anderson told Congress last week, “hate speech turns into hate action, and hate action almost took my life from me.”
“The time to do something is now.”
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.
Most Viewed in World
Source: Read Full Article
