The aftermath of the massacre at Club Q continues to show how dangerous the world has become for LGBTQ+ people.

Rarely have I seen a mass shooting event like the one that took place at the weekend followed up with such callousness by major political figures and pundits.

While most said little or nothing, some seemed to want more.

The usual, banal, ‘thoughts and prayers’ were scarce and fleeting, replaced instead with what felt like calls for the shooting to be repeated until we stop being LGBTQ.

The problem facing our community couldn’t have been highlighted any clearer than it was by the father of the person arrested for killing five in Club Q and injuring far more.

When he was first informed his child was suspected of being a mass murderer, his immediate concern was that his child was gay, because it happened in a ‘gay bar’.

“They started telling me about the incident, a shooting…,” Aaron Franklin Brink said. “And then I go on to find out it’s a gay bar. I got scared, ‘Shit, is he gay?’ And he’s not gay, so I said, phew… I am a conservative Republican.

“You know Mormons don’t do gay. We don’t do gay. There’s no gays in the Mormon church. We don’t do gay.

“I praised him for violent behaviour really early. I told him it works… You’ll get immediate results.”

According to the Daily Beast, who spoke to another relative, the shooter, Anderson Lee Aldrich, “Brink, and Aldrich’s mother, Laura Voepel, have long raised red flags among others in the family.”

If anyone within the community was hoping that the shooting might serve as an inflection point for many of the voices who have driven us to this place, Tucker Carlson wasted no time making sure we knew that would not be happening:

Rather than seeing Club Q as a red light, the far-right are using it as a green light to go harder.

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