Response to The Club Q Shooting
In the great words of Bo Burnum “there it is again, that funny feeling.” I have cried many times over the past few weeks at the loss of my community in Colorado Springs, and was overjoyed when I found out that the perpetrator of this violence will be facing hate crime charges. But as I continued to think about it, I concluded that this is truly bigger than just one person’s hate and violence toward my community. It is a larger attack coming from more than one person, and can lead up to people that were elected to represent their whole constituency, people who work with conspiracy theorists seeking for a scapegoat to blame and cause a moral panic. I for one am sick of it!
These laws, the ‘don’t say gay’ bill and those trying to prevent a trans child from playing sports on a team that is, ultimately, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, are the root of the problem here. People have looked at my community, the queer community, and have made us the out to be the villains of every moral problem that our country is currently facing. Every time we make actual progress, it feels as if we are forced 5 steps back. It has come to the point where some of our political representatives looked at the queer community, which has just lost 5 of its members to senseless violence, and told us that this wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t shove our queerness in their faces.
Queer people do not owe people outside of our community comfort. This ‘land of the free, home of the brave’ is beginning to feel less and less real every day, as I am terrified to participate in my community due to the constant threat of violence.
It’s easy to forget, but remember this: when murders like this happen, it is a direct result of the senseless and persistent attacks on my community. Whether they are the result of gun violence or, legislation, an attack is still an attack.
