The FBI recently arrested a man who had threatened to kill a doctor in Boston who provides gender-affirming care to transgender children. The following day, members of two far-right groups, the Patriot Front and the Proud Boys, gathered outside of a Unitarian church in Columbus, Ohio, leading to the cancellation of a drag queen story hour. These incidents came just weeks after a mass shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ club in Colorado Springs, which was planning to host a drag performance to honor the upcoming Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Such attacks are part of a staggering rise in anti-LGBTQ+ violence and threats across the country. While the motives of these events are not always clear, as of 2020, around one out of every five hate crimes committed in the U.S. were motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ bias, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The fuel for much of this violence has been far-right rhetoric spread by white nationalist groups, extremist influencers and conservative politicians, says Yotam Ophir, an assistant professor of communications at the University at Buffalo, who studies misinformation and extremism. “It’s become pretty clear that the LGBTQ+ community is now at the heart of the new iteration of the culture wars that we have been unfortunately going through in recent years,” he says. This community has become “a staple of right-wing messaging and often propaganda.”
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