Club Q Proves The LGBTQ Community Will Fight Back

On Monday, an anti-queer terrorist murdered five people and physically injured at least 18 more. The assailant was stopped by Richard Fierro, an Iraq war veteran who was at Club Q with his wife, daughter, and his daughter’s partner, plus two family friends, in order to watch one of their friends perform at the drag show. Within minutes of the shooter opening fire, Richard tackled the man, grabbed his gun, and began beating him with his own firearm. The Republican electoral strategy to make everyone and their mother afraid of drag queen story hour and the general acceptance and normalization of queerness failed electorally, but what we see here is another expression of that same vile bigotry. Social conservatives may have failed at the ballot box in 2022, but they will continue trying to impose a world in which queerness is inherently dehumanizing via whatever means necessary. Much like Richard, allies need to be ready to fight back, and fight for a world where our queer and nonbinary brothers and sist