There is a correlation between hateful political rhetoric and a rise in hate crimes.
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare to have their child’s safety or well-being threatened. That’s what two gay parents, Robbie Pierce and Neal Broverman, experienced this week when a man accosted them and their two small children on an Amtrak train from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
The man screamed at them for simply being a family, using anti-LGBTQ language and homophobic tropes that date back decades. The attack, which was uniquely horrifying because it involved the couple’s two young children, makes me fear for my own family’s safety at a time when the LGBTQ community is already facing a string of violence.
Take the three people who were attacked as they were leaving a drag show in Old Town Pasadena, or the gay club in Brooklyn that was set on fire, or the deaths of two Black, transgender women in Chicago, at least one of which was ruled a murder (the other is still under investigation). This was all in the past month, and it doesn’t capture the full scope of heinous acts.
While attacks on our community are sadly nothing new, this current environment, in which public officials use dangerous rhetoric while peddling bills that discriminate against us, feels ever more fraught. It doesn’t help that some Republicans are increasingly perpetuating the harmful myth that liberals and members of the LGBTQ community are grooming children — a move that shatters any illusions that the US has become fully understanding and accepting of our LGBTQ lives and experiences.