Q Toon: Merry Christmassacre

 

Saturday night, a young man armed with two long rifles of the AR-15 variety burst into Club Q, a popular LGBTQ+ bar in Colorado Springs, and opened fire. Two of the bar patrons heroically disarmed and subdued him, but not before five people were killed and at least 17 more injured by gunfire or in the ensuing panic.

It was an exceptionally violent week across the U.S. Prior to the Club Q shooting, a former member of the University of Virginia football team shot and killed three current Cavaliers and wounded two others on a bus returning to campus from a class field trip; someone still at large stabbed four University of Idaho students to death at their off-campus apartment.

Politicians and religious leaders from across the political spectrum expressed their varying degrees of outrage and sympathy after each of these tragedies, the Club Q attack no less than the others.

That includes Colorado Congressman Lauren Boebert — or someone on her staff, or whoever paid Elon Musk eight bucks to impersonate her — who sent out a sympathetic tweet the morning after the Club Q shooting:

Up to now, Boebert's reputation has been as an ammosexual activist (today's cartoon is based on her actual 2021 family Christmas card), a hard-core defender of all things Trump, and a spreader of Trans Derangement Syndrome. On the floor of the House, on the campaign trail, on right-wing media, and prolifically on Twitter, she has mocked others' pronoun preferences, blamed trans men for shortages of baby formula and tampons earlier this year, and accused the Biden “regime” of paying for the “mutilation of children who are gender confused.”

In August, Human Rights Campaign rated her as the #3 on their list of "the top ten people responsible for driving the 'grooming' narrative on Twitter."

Back when Twitter had rules about hateful conduct.

But if she finally wants the public to know she's now against slaughtering LGBTQ+ citizens, perhaps at least we're seeing some progress. Why, even Franklin Graham has come out against spraying weapons fire into gay bars.

Consider that only six years ago, the morning after the terrorist attack on Pulse nightclub in Orlando that killed 49 LGBTQ+ patrons, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, thought it would be a good time to tweet out Galatians 6:7: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Faced with uproar from the LGBTQ+ community and our allies and friends, Patrick quickly took his tweet down, and his staff issued a mealy-mouthed apology that it had nothing to do with the massacre. It was just supposed to be an inspirational message from a random book off his nightstand.

Twenty or thirty years ago back before Twitter, politicians like Patrick would have responded to loss of LGBTQ+ life by proudly issuing that biblical passage as a press release. That generation of conservatives unapologetically exulted that HIV/AIDS was God's punishment of gay men for being gay, and made jokes about Jeffrey Dahmer.

So, goody for Lauren Boebert for showing some vestige of humanity this time. Those morning prayers were the least she could do, and I guess they're better than nothing at all.

But they don't get her off the hook for contributing to a culture that egged on — and armed — some murderous psychopathic loser.