Gay bars were a safe space, but what do one do when the place meant as a haven om the world's attacks is, stead, a target?
Contents:
- COLORADO GAY BAR SHOOTG SPECT INTIFI AS ‘NONBARY,’ LAWYERS SAY
- MUGSHOT OF COLORADO GAY CLUB SHOOTG SPECT SHOWS JURI STAED DURG NONTATN WH 'HEROIC PEOPLE'
- WHO IS ANRSON LEE ALDRICH, SPECT MASS SHOOTG AT COLORADO GAY NIGHTCLUB?
- THE GAY BAR AS SAFE SPACE HAS BEEN SHATTERED
COLORADO GAY BAR SHOOTG SPECT INTIFI AS ‘NONBARY,’ LAWYERS SAY
Anrson Lee Aldrich, the spect acced of shootg five people and jurg others at a gay bar Colorado Sprgs intifi as nonbary. * gay bar shooter *
The spect acced of shootg five people and jurg more than a dozen others at a gay bar Colorado Sprgs intifi as nonbary and they/them pronouns, the alleged shooter’s public fenrs said a urt filg on Tuday. — Alexandria Os-Cortez (@AOC) November 20, 2022“The attack on a gay-oriented nightspot immediately raised worri about any nnectn to the untry’s rrosive cultural nflicts, ” the Washgton Post reported. Aldrich was then moved to El Paso County Jail on spect ma their first urt appearance via vio lk om the jail on Wednday, where they uld be seen slumped a chair wh visible bisg on their fence lawyers appeared to need to prompt Aldrich durg the brief vio spect spoke twice, wh a slurred rponse, nfirmg their name and to say "no" when the judge asked whether they had any on Tuday, fence lawyers said the acced is nonbary and a footnote to their filg asserted that Aldrich prefers g the pronouns "they" and "them" more: Colorado gay club shootg spect intifi as non-bary, lawyers say.
MUGSHOT OF COLORADO GAY CLUB SHOOTG SPECT SHOWS JURI STAED DURG NONTATN WH 'HEROIC PEOPLE'
The victims of a shootg at a gay club Colorado have spoken out about their oral. The spect who allegedly killed five people at a Colorado gay club before beg subdued by two revelers was intified Sunday as 22-year-old Anrson Lee Aldrich.
The shootg also brought back paful memori of the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre Orlando, Florida, when a Mlim man who had equented gay clubs the past and exprs disda for “filthy” members of the LGBTQ muny killed 49 people. Correctn append, June 15 If the gunman who shot and killed 50 people an attack on the Orlando gay nightclub Pulse sought not merely to end life but to sow terror the LGBT muny, he uldn’t have chosen a more apt target.
WHO IS ANRSON LEE ALDRICH, SPECT MASS SHOOTG AT COLORADO GAY NIGHTCLUB?
But the tail of havg happened not jt to gay people (by a gunman whose father has spoken out about his son’s dislike of gay men) but at a gay bar cuts to the very heart of a margalized group’s fears.
For s, gay bars have functned not merely as waterg hol but as gatherg plac and facto muny centers. Sunday morng’s attack didn’t jt cut short dozens of liv; also tore a hole the very agile sense of secury for gay people Ameri. Read more: What to Know About the Pulse Nightclub Shootg Orlando Gay bars have occupied their functn for s (a Bourbon Street tablishment claims to be Ameri’s olst, havg operated sce the end of Prohibn), and have been the object of srn and ocsnal vlence throughout that time.
That vlence, like the burng of New Orleans’s Upstairs Lounge, killg 32, June 1973, only served to emphasize the importance of strongholds where gay people uld, y, drk, but also socialize among themselv and velop their own social mor.
THE GAY BAR AS SAFE SPACE HAS BEEN SHATTERED
In an cint so famo that Barack Obama mentned almost offhandly his send Ingural Addrs, the police raid on the Stonewall Inn June 1969 helped crystallize exactly what the gay movement was up agast—and tly ma a movement. Gay people have fought, through recent history, for cremental steps towards equaly, and that fight began at the muny center. But that fight n too often seem, for younger gay people, very much of the last century.
What’s noticeable about gay bars the ma is not their stat as centers for public polil anizatn but their anonymy.
Equaly also means the right to a space of one’s own, and gay bars reprent a sort of separatens, or eedom om scty, that’s available nowhere else the culture. Unlike members of other margalized groups fed by ethnicy or relign, gay people do not grow up fai prised of people who share their mographic profile. Gay bars are where gay people have, historilly, found one another to learn that language and those tradns — and to vent them.