At Club Q, the Right Got What They Wanted
#149
Welcome to Third Cultured, a newsletter about Queer people in diplomacy, politics, and war from the perspective of Kyle Borland (he/they). My goal is to highlight all the ways today is different (and not so) from yesterday.
Third Cultured is available to all, but please consider becoming a paid subscriber in order to comment on articles and enjoy other community benefits.
This edition:
Opinion Essay
Opinion Essay
My heart is shattered and I don’t have anything left but fury at this point.
In a case of tragic irony, I added a Pulse memorial dedication in early December to my calendar yesterday. Never in my wildest, darkest dreams did I expect to wake up the next day to the news that, yet again, a pathetic husk of a man gunned down my community at another one of our safe spaces. Even in a region dominated by evangelicals and military conservatives like Colorado Springs, the Right needed us to know that we are not safe in the spaces like Club Q that we have painstakingly carved out for ourselves over decades. Manufacturing terror is the point.
The Right wants us to know that there is nowhere we can go to escape them. They will target us online, harass us through their politicians, isolate us via state and federal laws, and when all else fails, they will show up in-person to kill us. They know they can count on the majority to do nothing while they spin their lies and cock their guns because of a finely crafted false equivalence between LGBTQ+ existence and the right to hate us. It’s because of that brainwashing that they can label us “groomers” while Christian clergy of every denomination molest children without fear of consequence. It’s because of that willful ignorance that they can carve out a right to discriminate based on “religious liberty” while they mow us down bullet-by-bullet.
The mass shooting at Club Q is exactly what these people want. People like Chaya Raichik from LibsofTikTok, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh, Lauren Boebert and the rest of their ilk. There is no debate to be had about this. They are flagrant with their intentions.
Mere hours after the shooting took place, LibsofTikTok targeted more drag performers in Colorado. You would have to be willfully obtuse to not see the motives behind this kind of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. These people want their followers to terrorize and kill Queer people in this way, or whatever way they’re inspired to do so by their content. If they label us “groomers” and “predators,” then their followers believe they have a moral imperative to take us down.
We know where this kind of rhetoric leads and draping blatant, repetitive, and targeted hate in a shield of “free speech” is pathetically callous. It’s a simpleton’s mythology, negating any context in order to justify absolutism. We have centuries of evidence that show the inevitable results of these campaigns. They are always wielded as the political weapon that they are in order to distract the manipulatable masses from the failures of their institutions.
No one is safe in America because we are forced to prioritize God and guns above the living, breathing human beings that make up the United States. These zealots want us to live under armed Christian Dominionism – we’ll call them Christianists – and LGBTQ+ people represent one of the defining challenges to their preferred order. If the Queers are allowed to be free, to live as we choose and to pursue happiness, then everyone else might get the same idea in their head.
To Christianists, we’re the reason their church pews are emptying out.
To Christianists, equality is a threat. Freedom is meant for them, not us.
I have written at length in this newsletter about what Queer people have faced over the past 1–2 years as the Christianists and their Republican allies introduced 300+ anti-LGBTQ+ laws across the US. As their insular media ecosystem has fed them lies and projections about “grooming,” “gender hysteria,” and spun up a full-fledged trans panic. It is no coincidence that the shooter, 22-year old Anderson Lee Aldrich, attacked Club Q on the night before the Trans Day of Remembrance.
They want us back in the closet, and they want us dead.
But, as they already know, they won’t get what they want.
Queer people and our community are more resilient than that. We have come too far, done too much work, and accomplished too many milestones to let Christianists and the lonely, rabid dogs they rile up to shrink us. LGBTQ+ people are a beacon of hope and freedom in a world backsliding into autocracy and authoritarianism.
Tragic days like today are a dark reminder of how, where, and why that resilience was forged. As Queer people, we don’t have a choice in the matter. The zealots will always keep coming for us, but their methods are old and they know their time is limited. They are a beast shoved into a corner, snapping at anything and everything in the darkness, hoping to drag anyone into the misery with them. The only problem is…they’re in the room alone, and they’ll stay that way, no matter how many times they gnaw and scratch at the ghosts of wars they’ve already lost.
Stay safe and hold each other close, beautiful people. We’re gonna need one another.
As always, thanks for reading.
Kyle (@kgborland)
