LGBTQ people targeted in more than 700 incidents since last year: Report

More than 700 incidents of violence and threats targeting LGBTQ people have occurred over the past year, including murder, harassment, assault and vandalism, according to an updated tally released Thursday by GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy organization, and the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

At least 26 transgender people since November 2022 have been killed in crimes motivated by an anti-transgender bias, according to Thursday’s count, released three days before the one-year anniversary of a mass shooting carried out at Club Q, a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs.

Five people — including two transgender people — were killed and 18 were injured in the Nov. 19 attack, which came on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, recognized each year on Nov. 20 to honor the lives of transgender people killed in acts of anti-transgender violence.

The shooter, 23-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in June after pleading guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder. 

“It’s been one year, one heartbreaking year since Daniel, Kelly, Ashley, Derrick, and Raymond were killed, and more than a dozen were injured, in the unthinkable attack in Colorado Springs,” GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said Thursday, using the victims’ first names. “When GLAAD spoke out in the hours after the devastating violence last November, we had one plea for elected, media and corporate leaders: stop the spread of anti-LGBTQ disinformation, which incites violence.” 

Ellis accused politicians and others of spreading “anti-LGBTQ lies and disinformation” in the year following the attack on Club Q in public forums and on social media, “inciting violence everywhere from elementary schools and libraries, to places of worship, to school board meetings, to places of business.” 

Anti-LGBTQ hate speech has surged over the past several years online, and all five major social media platforms received low or failing scores on an annual assessment of LGBTQ user safety released by GLAAD in June. The group’s report deemed X, formerly known as Twitter, “the most dangerous platform for LGBTQ people.” 

Anti-LGBTQ hate crimes have also risen sharply, according to an FBI report released last month, and more than 500 bills targeting LGBTQ people were introduced this year in state legislatures across the country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. At least 84 became law. 

“Our children are banned from mentioning their two moms at school,” Ellis, who is openly gay, said Thursday, referring to education bills passed in a handful of GOP-led states that restrict talk of sexual orientation and gender identity in public school classrooms. 

Ellis on Thursday also referenced the murders of Lauri Carleton, who was fatally shot in August after refusing to remove a rainbow Pride flag from the front of her clothing store in Cedar Glen, Calif., and O’Shae Sibley, who was killed in July for voguing to Beyoncé at a New York City gas station. 

“I don’t want to be able to recycle this statement in November 2024,” Ellis said. “LGBTQ people and our allies need 100% support in words and action, urgently.”