It's not just that gay bars are supposed to be a safe space.
People who hate queer people want us to keep it private. Behind closed doors. Someplace they don't have to see it. And the doors of a gay bar are doors we keep it behind. A place we can go and be together and not bother *them* with the fact of our existence.
And behind those doors... is a place we can forget *they* exist. Not straight people. There are straight people in gay bars and clubs. Our friends. But behind those doors we can forget — we can suspend our disbelief — and pretend the haters don't exist. Just for a few hours.
An attack like this says "not even here." Behind closed doors isn't good enough for *them.* It's not that they want us to exist out of sight. They don't want us to exist at all.
So, if we're not safe in there... behind closed doors... where they say they want us... we have no choice but to fight to make it safe everywhere, for all LGBT people.
"Out of the bars and into the streets!"
That was a chant heard during the Stonewall Riots. The modern LGBT civil rights movement began with an attack on a bunch of queer people—gay men, drag queens, trans women, butch dykes—being themselves behind closed doors.
The raid on the Stonewall Inn was state-sponsored violence. The attack on Club Q in Colorado Springs last night... well, we're waiting on the full details. But it looks like GOP-sponsored violence. Not just the logical result of the "groomer" blood libel, but the goal.
They used to say there was something wrong with us because we only gathered in seedy bars. But that was where they herded us. That was the only space we were allowed. And when they attacked us in a gay bar one time too many... we poured out of not just that bar, but all of them.
Into the streets.
Behind closed doors was never enough. They knocked down those doors and arrested us in bedrooms and evicted us from our apartments and fired us from our jobs and made something that's already hard to do—loving another human being—almost impossible.
We fought back then. We fought back last night.
"The 22-year-old suspect... immediately began shooting at people once he entered Club Q and at least two people 'confronted and fought' with him, stopping him from harming others, officials said."
washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/11…
And we're going to keep fighting. Because if we're not safe behind the closed doors of a gay bar — if they can't let us have even that — then we're not safe anywhere.
So we will fight until we're safe everywhere.
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