Club Q shooting is another example of growing violence against LGBTQ community
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Scott LaMar
Airdate: Monday, November 28, 2022
Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado was described as a “safe space” for patrons no matter what their sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression is or was. That safe space was shattered last weekend when a gunman burst into the club and shot and killed five people and wounded at least 17 others.
It was the latest mass shooting where LGBTQ people were targeted.
Violence and harassment against the LGBTQ community is not uncommon. The National Center for Transgender Equality reports 47 known transgender people have been killed since November of 2021 and that’s just transgender people.
Why are LGBTQ people targeted?
It’s a question posed on The Spark Monday to Amanda Arbour, Executive Director of the LGBT Center of Central PA,”any marginalized group is at greater risk of experiencing violence, of being targeted by violence. Just because we are more marginalized, we have less support, whether it’s legally or just societally, we’re more vulnerable. But then when you look at the layers of marginalization and how it’s compounded so you know me as a white cis queer woman, you know, I have less risk of being targeted than a transgender woman of color, particularly a black transgender woman, because of those layers of homophobia on top of transphobia, on top of racism and sexism and all of these things.
What can be done about it?
Tesla Taliaferro, President of the Rainbow Rose Center in York, who grew up in Colorado Springs and has visited Club Q said,”I think we need to see the passage of the Equality Act in the United States that’s going to provide a lot of civil rights protections as far as protecting people for their sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression in employment, housing, public accommodations, education and things like that. But we also need to see a stop in the anti LGBTQ A-plus legislation that’s being introduced. We had 300 laws introduced across the United States and 36 different states this year in 2022. And I think we need to put a stop to that legislation from even making headway before we can really go on the offensive and say, this is how we protect this community. We need to stop the violence, violent rhetoric, the violent acts. I think that’s where we start.”
Arbour added,”We need legal protections for our communities because in the state of Pennsylvania, we don’t have nondiscrimination protections. The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission does take complaints of anti LGBTQ discrimination. And under under their definition of what sex discrimination is, they will investigate those complaints. But, that’s something that could change under a different administration that’s not in the statute. And in Pennsylvania, although in 2002, we had a hate crimes law passed that included sexual orientation and gender identity that was then rolled back in 2008. So, you know, if God forbid, this were to happen in Pennsylvania, legally, it would not be considered a hate crime. So we need those protections for our communities.”
