Re: the massacre of people in the Colorado Springs LGBTQ+ community this weekend
Anti-trans rhetoric fuels executions
I was 15 when I came out as gay—in 2008 in Sacramento, CA, days before the Beijing Olympics and months before voters in the State of California passed Proposition 8, a ballot measure which banned same sex marriage; in the early days of Facebook my parents quietly worried if I would miss out on opportunities (employment, educational, etc.) if I was out as gay on my social media profile. I had just gotten home from summer science camp, having worked up the courage over the previous 12 months to come out to someone—anyone, really. A confidante. I was excited to be out and I used Facebook to tell as many of these new and old communities of mine the exciting news—trying to get the coming out process over with as quickly as possible—all while on the tv watching Matthew Mitcham become the first openly gay man to win an individual Olympic gold medal (and for the 10m platform at that!), setting the single-highest dive score in Olympic history in the process and blocking China from a home-field shut-out of gold medals in diving.
Eight years later, on a Saturday night during Pride Month in June 2016 at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, 49 people were slaughtered in a targeted attack on the LGBTQ+ community. The next morning as I drove on-site to my first job out college at Genentech in Vacaville, CA the first thing I saw was an American Flag, a State of California Flag, a flag with the Genentech logo, and a Pride Flag lowered to half-mast. I was affected by this gesture of solidarity—it felt definite, assuring. I was clearly welcome where I worked and in my Industry.
Two days ago (another Saturday—this last Saturday), I was with close family and family friends at an event that was crowded: a Causeway Classic with record attendance. There were 23,073 people at Sacramento State’s football stadium—a stadium where US Olympic Trials were held at the turn of the millennium in 2000 and 2004. There was no security check coming into the stadium. The speakers didn’t work on our side so it was fairly quiet because nobody could hear the calls over the crowd noise. Every time Sac State scored, a cannon that sounded like a bomb went off. I found myself conditioned to the sound, responding each time it happened with an immediate “I hate that” to my mom as I looked around.
Imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to hear gunshots in a place of community where you feel safe.
Maybe you’re dancing to Donna Summer, singing along at a concert, or watching a football game with your family.
Imagine, worse too, if too many people start to panic at something that sounded like a bomb going off or gunfire—if the laws of fluid dynamics started applying to groups of people trying to escape down narrow flights of stairs, like play dough going through a strainer, like what happened only weeks ago in Itaewon where 158 died and 196 were injured in a crowd crush scenario. There is a long-established history of crowd control-related tragedies.
That same Saturday night, this last Saturday night, five people were executed in Colorado Springs, CO when one person in body armor and with and AR-15-style rifle decided that he wanted to kill people. There are clear contributing causes for the mass shooting event at Club Q this last Saturday night:
-”Anti-LGBTQ sentiment in Colorado Springs had some in the community anticipating tragedy”
-[Trigger Warning: article talking about triage response to Sandy Hook Elementary School] link
We MUST address these issues—they are existential. Thoughts and prayers are inaction—they will not solve the country’s biggest problems, let alone humanity’s. Enacting controls to prevent anyone or anything from obtaining weapons that can kill 50 (or even 5) people feels like a reasonable thing to progress toward. We ARE able to amend our Constitution, you know. We don’t have to go back to the drawing board on the 2nd Amendment—an amendment that is really kind of just one long run-on sentence. The Founders literally put an amendment process in there so that it could be updated to reflect current society and we have done it many times before. Times have changed since Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.
Martin Niemöller put it best, in 1946:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Please educate yourself about Anti-Transgender Legislation and recent upbursts of Antisemitism. Don’t be satisfied just by progress—there are lives at stake here.
For anyone struggling in wakes of events like these, or in general, please use whatever mental health services are available to you. Lyra and Betterhelp are wonderful options and many employers provide access to them.