In the wake of the mass shooting at a Colorado gay bar, a reactionary media has blood on its hands
Even after the mass murder at Club Qâand with the blood of the queer and trans people murdered there not yet dried on the floorâcritics from far-right to center-left continue to pursue this agenda. In an elegy for the shooting victims, one prominent columnist, midway through a passionate attack on the far-right for having inspired this mass murder, took pains to set the hate-mongers she was critiquing apart from âlegitimate debates over questions like when puberty blockers should be prescribed or gender-confirming surgeries performed on minors.â Those debates, published in magazines such as The Atlantic, are cited in the bills backed by the state legislators whose grandsons commit mass murder in our bars. Those bills define being trans as a form of pornography, they aim to make public trans existence in front of childrenâwalking down the street, going to the supermarketâa felony. They inspire bomb threats called in to childrenâs hospitals. The articles cited in these bills and legislative debates are the politest possible version of blood libel. They are no more legitimate in a discussion of these murders than rhetoric about Jewish lust for the blood of Christian children would have been in coverage of the Tree of Life murders. What liberals are desperate to call âlegitimate debatesâ are united with the cruder, crasser incitement of less-sophisticated reactionaries by the same underlying argument: that some nebulous group of queer and trans âactivistsâ are pushing an âagendaâ that might permanently mutilate children, who must be protected from the threat. Matt Walsh and Chris Rufo say itâs drag queens committing sexual abuse in gay bars. Abigail Shrier says itâs the âtransgender craze seducing our daughtersâ into âIrreversible Damage.â The liberal outlets describe it as misguided doctors and activists going too far, contributing to a social contagion of trans kids. All of them are making versions of the same argument designed to convince different audiences of the same age-old blood libel about queer people: that we are preternatural abusers from whom your children need protecting.












