Conservative media and 'influencers' on networks redouble their anti-LGBTQ rhetoric after the deadly shooting at a gay club in Colorado

By Ben Goggin and Kat Tenbarge —

Right-wing media figures and social media

have doubled down on their inflammatory rhetoric against the LGBTQ community following Saturday night's shooting at a Colorado Springs gay club that killed five people. 

This rhetoric reflects everything that advocates for the LGBTQ community have been denouncing for months, especially regarding false claims that children are being sexualized or harassed by LGBTQ people and events.

The motive for the Colorado shooting is unknown, but the person in custody faces five counts of first-degree murder and five counts of hate crimes causing bodily harm, better known as hate crimes.

This Wednesday appear before a court.

On Monday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson condemned the shooting, focusing on the background of the person in custody, who had threatened his mother with a bomb in 2021. Yet three minutes into his nearly 15 minutes in, Carlson held up a graphic that read "STOP SEXUALIZING CHILDREN."

On Tuesday night he hosted a guest who said the shootings will continue to happen "until we end this evil agenda that is targeting children."

Tribute in Colorado Springs to the victims. David Zalubowski / AP

Alejandra Caraballo, a professor at Harvard Law School, believes that the repetitive message from Carlson and others opens the door to violence against LGBTQ people.

“The way they drive support for this type of violence is essentially by making it seem morally justified in the minds of the people who believe it,” Caraballo said, “constantly painting LGBT people as pedophiles and online bullies.”

"So people feel morally justified in carrying out this violence," she added.

[This poem is giving strength to many after the shooting at a gay club in Colorado]

Some closely followed social media accounts that have routinely and misleadingly associated LGBTQ people with the sexualization of children have continued to do so in recent days.

Tim Pool, a conservative social media personality with 1.4 million Twitter followers, took aim at the venue, Club Q, where the shooting took place.

“We should not tolerate pedophiles grooming children,” he tweeted, “Club Q had a

event [adult bullying of a minor via social media].

How do you prevent violence and stop

?” Pool said, apparently referring to the all-ages Sunday

held at the venue, [and which of course have nothing to do with the criminal activity this individual says denounce].

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[The Latino who arrested the gay bar shooter in Colorado Springs wanted to defend his family.

"I'm no hero," he says]

Ari Drennen, director of the LGBTQ program at Media Matters, a progressive watchdog organization, called Pool's claim false and "insanely dangerous and irresponsible."

Drennen, who tracks media narratives around LGBTQ people, said he didn't even in his “worst nightmare scenario” predict responses to the Colorado mass shooting.

“A lot of these people seem to have entered territory where they feel very comfortable advocating for people to take the law into their own hands,” Drennen said.

Libs of TikTok, a prominent conservative social media brand created by Chaya Raichik that has 1.5 million followers on Twitter and is focused on the LGBTQ community, proceeded with its usual practices on the platform on Sunday and Monday, reposting videos and posts from LGBTQ creators with fewer followers and opening them up to harassment and criticism.

In a Sunday post, the account focused on Colorado specifically, highlighting a nonprofit organization that hosts events for children interested in drag. 

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Matt Walsh, a prominent conservative YouTuber known for his criticism of LGBTQ people, posted a video on Tuesday titled "Why the Left is So Desperate to Expose Kids to

."

Walsh, who has 1.9 million YouTube subscribers, called the shooting "tragic" but doubled down on his attacks on

.

“Is it so hard not to cross-dress in front of the children?” he asked in the video, “if it causes so much chaos and violence, why do you insist on doing it?”

Carlson, Raichik, Walsh and Pool did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[They accuse the detainee of the shooting in a gay club in Colorado of hate crimes]

Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD, said the continued demonization of LGBTQ people by conservative media figures has taken its toll.

“No one holds them accountable for all the misinformation they are spreading, but then we have to show that we are not who they say we are,” Ellis said.

At least one Republican politician also addressed LGBTQ people on social media following the shooting.

On Monday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ge., posted a video of herself on her newly reinstated Twitter account in which she attacked trans people. 

“The left wants you to believe that you can make your gender whatever you want,” she said.

"They want kids in school to learn that they can change their gender to whatever they want!"

A representative for Greene responded to a request for comment from NBC News asking: "Are you suggesting that chromosomes can be changed?"

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The LGBTQ community has faced a wave of threats and violence.

In recently published research from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at the University of California, San Bernardino, researchers found that reports

Ellis said that LGBTQ community leaders have "seen a dramatic increase" in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

She said more than 344 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed this legislative season "to solve problems that never existed." 

“They use all this language, 'grooming,' 'pedophiles,' it's mostly around children and children,” Ellis said.

"In the meantime, many in our community are parents and have children and are trying to protect our children." 

According to the researchers,

Jeremy Blackburn, a professor of computer science at Binghamton University in New York who studies extremism online, found that the use of the term

on networks increased 100% as of March compared to the start of 2022.

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On Twitter, the use of a homophobic slur has grown markedly in the past seven days, according to data reviewed by a team of researchers at Montclair State University's Center for Strategic Communication, which studies and monitors social media.

Use of the word

on Twitter saw even more growth, with data showing nearly as many mentions of the word in the past two days as in the past two weeks combined, the researchers found.

Caraballo noted that the rise of anti-LGBTQ discourse on social media has been met with reduced suspensions on Twitter, where he said major anti-LGBTQ accounts that were suspended in the last five years have been reactivated. 

“This is a critical time for social media,” Caraballo said, “this is primed for some very violent people to do shocking acts of violence, and all of this is being pushed on social media and on Fox News, on Tucker Carlson.”