The Colorodo Springs Massacre Was a Hate Crime
While responsibility for the murders falls only on the murderer, the responsibility for the terror trans people are feeling is not because of him alone. The responsibility for that climate falls on the GOP, and the right wing media.
by Evan Urquhart
Reports from Colorado Springs state that the man accused of killing 5 and wounding 18 in Club Q early on Sunday morning has been charged with hate crimes. The suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, is believed to be the grandson of a CA GOP lawmaker, Randy Voepel, a MAGA supporter who faced calls for expulsion due to comments he made about the January 6th uprising.
I don’t want to print anything that turns out to be inaccurate, but while I wait to call out the massacre “officially” an act of far right extremist terror stoked by anti-trans propaganda and hate, the situation only grows more frightening for trans and queer people across the country. It stretches my belief in coincidence that Club Q was not chosen for its drag performances and gender diverse clientele, in a climate of ongoing moral panic and glorification of violence. That climate is the fault of one, and only one, of the two major US political parties. We cannot be tongue tied forever in calling this what it is.
The gunman was 22. Younger even than Daniel Davis Ashton (28), the youngest of the named victims. While responsibility for the murders falls only on the murderer, the responsibility for the terror trans people are feeling is not because of him alone. The responsibility for that climate falls on the GOP, and the right wing media, and on Elon Musk, and Twitter, and even on the New York Times, who have been willing to ignore basic journalistic ethics in furtherance of printing anti-trans bias.
Every moment I wait to call this what it is feels like another drop in the bucket, and it feels like any drop could be the one that finally cements the trajectory this country is on towards a Christian nationalist regime imposed upon an unwilling populace through violence.
Two of the five victims in Colorado Springs were trans; one a trans man, and one a trans woman.
Trans people, and all queer people, just want to live. We cannot live like this.