‘There’s blood on your hands’: Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric surged ahead of Club Q shooting

LGBTQ activists and allies say inflammatory language by politicians, other public figures fuels environment for violence.

Michael Collins, Anna Lynn Winfrey, Tami Abdollah, USA TODAY, Nov 23, 2022

Just hours after a gunman opened fire in an LGBTQ nightclub late last weekend, Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert offered her prayers for the five people killed and the dozens of others wounded in the assault.

“The news out of Colorado Springs is absolutely awful,” the Republican lawmaker wrote on Twitter early Sunday. “This morning the victims & their families are in my prayers. This lawless violence needs to end and end quickly.”

Boebert’s sympathetic words were a far cry from the incendiary language she often uses to denounce members of the LGBTQ community.

A report in August that documented a surge in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on social media by politicians and other public figures named Boebert as one of the worst offenders.

The conservative congresswoman has claimed that transgender youth are used “for horrific sexual ‘research,’” described federal legislation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as “dangerous” and “disgusting,” urged Americans to “take your children to church, not drag bars,” and mocked gender nonconforming and transgender people by joking her preferred pronoun is “patriot.”

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Article URL : https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/11/23/anti-lgbtq-rhetoric-surged-before-colorado-springs-shooting/10749600002/