COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — You stand in line at the grocery store and notice a man, holding his child's hand, turn to glare at you with naked disgust.
You are riding the bus when a man shouts Bible verses at you, calling you an abomination while the other passengers look away.
You avoid public restrooms, afraid you'll be attacked if you use one.
You get asked to leave the close-knit congregation where you dedicated decades of your life. You are told your former church is changing its bylaws to discourage you and other transgender people from attending services.
You receive three death threats. Your home is ransacked.
Your family, including your mother, refuses to speak with you.
You are preached at, hissed at, sneered at, and spat at.
You are called a "groomer" and a "pedophile." You are compared to an animal. You get the shit beaten out of you.
To be transgender in Colorado Springs is to live under siege.
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But in the middle of all of that was Club Q. Club Q was a refuge, an "island," several transgender and gender-nonconforming locals told Insider. Queer or straight, cisgender or transgender, fabulous or farmhand — everyone was welcome here and made to feel safe. Until that day in late November, just hours after a punk drag performance, on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, when a shooter entered Club Q and opened fire.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, is accused of murdering five people that night — including two transgender people, Daniel Aston and Kelly Loving — and wounding 17 others. The shooting also robbed a community of its sanctuary.
"I feel numb," said Parker Grey, a transgender man who was once a regular at the LGBTQ nightclub. He had stopped going to the club after the intensity of transphobia in Colorado Springs led him to try to hide his transgender identity. But now he's back, helping to organize vigils. He said he is grieving deeply but feels too calloused to break down and cry.
"I've become accustomed to it," he said. "I just expect to be met with nothing but negativity."
The hate state
Colorado Springs wasn't always an epicenter of homophobic and transphobic vitriol.
But in 1984, Ted Haggard founded his New Life Church here, which grew to more than 10,000 congregants as he lobbied against same-sex marriage. Focus on the Family, the conservative ministry and media powerhouse, moved its headquarters to Colorado Springs in 1990, its 45-acre campus becoming a national base for an increasingly political Christian right. Soon, the city became home to more than a hundred Christian-right ministries, many of which have incubated anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and mobilized against LGBTQ rights in the decades since.
Shortly after Focus on the Family arrived, this growing conglomerate of Colorado Springs ministries galvanized its political will to block progressive cities, including Boulder and Denver, from protecting LGBTQ rights. They backed a state constitutional amendment, Amendment 2, that would bar Colorado's municipalities from prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Activists poured in from around the country to oppose the measure, but in 1992 it passed decisively, and Colorado earned the moniker "the hate state."
Amendment 2 was eventually struck down by the Supreme Court, and Haggard was forced out by New Life for "sexually immoral conduct" with a male escort. But through its Washington, DC, lobbying arm the Family Research Council and its radio shows, podcasts, and newsletters, Focus on the Family has continued to set the agenda on sexuality and gender for tens of millions of US evangelicals.
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Through widely circulated pamphlets, slide decks, and podcasts, Focus on the Family now provides resources for how to advocate for your "parental rights" in opposing protections for transgender kids at school, supports conversion therapy for transgender youth, and reinforces anti-transgender messaging to millions of followers and millions more congregants of aligned Evangelical churches nationwide.
Such messaging is familiar at local Christian-right ministries such as The Road at Chapel Hills and the Church at Briargate. At The Road, which is deeply involved in local politics and puts together Christian voter guides, the senior pastor Steve Holt has preached that transgender identity is "demonic," the result of "massive evil." Scott Bottoms, the pastor at Briargate, was elected as a state representative in November; he has called drag performers "pedophiles" and said the death penalty is "too nice for pedophiles."
Insider asked Bottoms if he was concerned about the impact of his rhetoric on transgender people. "People that try to push our children to be transgenders and bring transgender dancers into our schools are pedophiles," Bottoms responded. "People that are pushing hormone therapies and surgeries on our children are pedophiles and should be treated as such."
A harassment campaign
Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School who monitors anti-LGBTQ extremist content online, said transphobic hate is now so widespread — circulating among anti-trans feminists, the Christian right, and violent hate groups such as neo-Nazis and white nationalists — that it has become a "self-reinforcing cycle," producing ever more hateful, violent messaging.
This demonizing vitriol has done more than spark a wave of anti-trans legislation, according to Heron Greenesmith, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates who monitors anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. "It is a harassment campaign," Greenesmith told Insider, one that may embolden perpetrators to take action.
An Insider analysis of five years of homicides targeting transgender people found that killings doubled between 2019 and 2021 as anti-trans legislation and rhetoric spiked.
