Republicans Use Nashville Shooting To Attack Trans People

It’s been a banner year for anti-transgender hate in America, a result of right-wing efforts to isolate and attack trans people.

In the wake of take mass in a private Christian school in Nashville there, conservatives have only heightened their anti-trans rhetoric, twisting the gender identity purported shooters into what they claim is a civilizational war by all trans people against Christians – even as Republicans across the country have thrown that. weight behind hundreds of bills that would strip trans people of their basic rights.

The police have said shooter identified as transgender – claim to be trans the activists and journalist have been criticized for not being verified – but they also noted that the shooter was a former student at the school. Authorities have not determined a specific motive for the attack. The shooter was killed by police at the school.

However, right-wing commentators argued that the shooting, which left three children and three adults dead, was nothing less than the start of a bloody war.

There, Tucker Carlson, the most watched cable news commentator in the country, called The “trans movement” is the “natural enemy” of Christianity. Christianity and “transgender orthodoxy,” he said, are incompatible and “on a collision course.”

“One side tends to draw blood before the other,” Carlson said before referring to the shooting. “Yesterday morning, tragically, our fears were confirmed.”

On the right, the main players characterize trans people not only as “groomers” – an attack that evokes the centuries-old fear of LGBTQ+ people who target children – but as violent actors.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), newly empowered because of his alliance with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), wonder out loud on Monday, “How many testosterone-like hormones and drugs for mental illness did the transgender Nashville school shooter take?” (The police have not said anything about any drugs the attacker may have taken.) Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com who has spent millions of dollars sowing doubt about the Democratic election win, asked his Twitter followers Wednesday, referring to trans people, “How many are going to be slaughtered on school grounds for profit? Because people don’t want them hanging around in lingerie with kids?”

The data on mass shootings could not be clearer: The most of them done by cisgender people. And trans people are more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crimes.

But after the shooting, right-wing media personalities hyped the claim that there were four trans or nonbinary people accused in the mass shooter in recent months. Among them were the attackers who killed five, including two trans people, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a gay nightclub last year. Although the accused shooter’s attorney has claimed in legal filings that the defendant used pronouns, some are skeptical: The police said The suspect ran a neo-Nazi website, used slurs for gay people and posted pictures from the gun range trained on gay pride parades. A former neighbor told NBC News, “I think it’s an insult to people who are really going through personal struggles with their own sexuality and personal identity.”

However, Twitter CEO Elon Musk – who allows the platform change to Heaven for far-right sound and it has been the company’s responsibility when tweets mention the “groomer” narrative. has increased by 119% — the answer to the post about the four accused shooters with the “!” comments. Donald Trump Jr. declare “A clear epidemic of trans/non-binary mass shooters,” which prompted notes from Twitter users about the thousands of cisgender male shooters not receiving equal scrutiny.

Even the terror felt by the trans community is attributed to them: After NBC News reported about the fear spreading in Nashville’s trans community after the school shooting, including one drag performer who noted that he will hire armed bodyguards for an upcoming show, right-wing media personality Matt Walsh said. report highlighted “trans privilege.” Walsh, whose Twitter bio proudly labels him “theocratic fascist” and “transphobe of the year,” added that “he” — referring to trans people — has killed children.

Rhetorical attacks on trans people have been accompanied this year by a flood of legislation targeting them.

Although there are less than 70 anti-trans bills introduced each year in state legislatures through 2020, there are 144 proposed in 2021, 174 proposed last year — and 490 proposed in the first three months of 2023, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker, a bill database.

Andrew Bales, who created the website, told HuffPost that states have passed 23 proposals into law this year, almost matching the 26 anti-trans bills passed nationwide in all of 2022.

Bales said that although certain proposals have been put forward for the past several years, such as restrictions on the use of bathrooms and school sports, state lawmakers have sponsored many bills in 2023 on gender-nonconforming performances, creating a legal definition that can go beyond a drag show. legislative bill behavior of trans children in schools. Bales also noted an increase in bills targeting gender-affirming health care: 148 have been proposed so far in 2023, more than the previous five years combined.

Some legislation would extend the ban on trans health care coverage to patients under the age of 26. Another bill would classify this health care as child abuse.

“It’s a very scary time, and it’s a time when I hope a lot of people see this and understand the type of attacks that happen to trans people and the level of threat that they have,” Bales said.

The bill is part of a hate movement against LGBTQ+ people in the United States.

In November, the Armed Conflict Locations & Events Data Project (ACLED) said anti-LGBTQ+ mobilization had “risen to its highest level” since the project began recording US data in 2020. The group’s spokesperson, Sam Jones, told HuffPost in an email that although the end of 2022 remains a high point – ACLED recorded 240 anti-LGBTQ + incidents in total last year – “anti-LGBTQ + mobilization continues at a very high level.”

“If you compare the first quarter of 2023 with the same period last year, for example, it was four times higher,” Jones said in an email. Incoming incidents this year include protests outside the family-friendly Drag Queen Story Hour and at a medical clinic that offers gender-affirming treatment to trans people. Members of the Proud Boys, a far-right street gang that played an integral role in the attack on Congress on January 6, 2021, often attend the event.

On Thursday, a police department in Ohio recommended canceling a drag brunch planned at a community church because of “a realistic threat that organized protests and counter-protests could lead to violence.” The week before — before the Nashville shooting — the church announced that a Molotov cocktail had been thrown on the property and a sign had been smashed with a sledgehammer, according to WJW-TV in Cleveland.

For Bales, who has tracked the right’s aggressive focus on the trans community for many years, the new attack is like an extension of years of fanaticism – an “extreme reaction” that goes back to the main victory for the LGBTQ + community, the US Supreme Court. legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.

“I think this year it’s really starting to roll around … the same bill that was introduced [in different states]the rhetoric changed to extraordinary “at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), he said. “It was scary to watch.”