Standing against LGBTQ+ hate – and those who spread it

By Keith Mahoney, Vice President of  Communications and Public Affairs

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Thanksgiving is a time when we look forward to spending time with family, friends and community.  Our community at the Boston Foundation is inclusive, and this week, we mourn for the victims of the shooting at Club Q, a club for the LGBTQ+ community in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This unconscionable crime, on the eve of the 23rd Transgender Day of Remembrance last Sunday, serves as a chilling reminder that anti-gay, anti-trans violence continues as an inescapable threat to millions in the LGBTQ+ community.

While the motives of the shooter are not yet publicly known, only willful blindness would allow us to ignore the recent increase in anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric on the political right in our country.  We are disgusted by the cynical efforts to demonize gay and trans people as “groomers,” to dehumanize them and cast them as threats for political theater. And we must call them out as the hate-filled sparks they are for tragedies such as Club Q. Couple hate speech with a continued resistance to any common sense efforts to curtail the availability of guns, and you create the circumstances leading up to these murders.

The Boston Foundation stands with the LGBTQ+ community in word and deed.  If you are looking to join us in support of those most impacted by the Club Q shooting, The Colorado Healing Fund is raising funds to assist those affected by this senseless violence. As of this writing, the Fund has raised over $240,000. 

We must all foster a community that is accepting of difference, committed to tolerance, and working towards equity.