Watch: Club Q Owner Testifies Before Congress About ‘Hundreds’ of Messages of Hate He Received After Anti-LGBTQ Attack
The hate crime mass shooting during a drag show at Club Q, a Colorado Springs nightclub that catered to LGBTQ people and their friends and families, left five people dead, 25 people injured, and a suspect with 305 criminal charges.
Club Q co-owner Matthew Haynes testified before Congress Wednesday, telling lawmakers that LGBTQ people are being “slaughtered and dehumanized,” as he read a few excerpts from what he says are the “hundreds” of messages of hate he received in the wake of the attack.
On December 1, the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security published its latest terrorism threat report, and for the first time LGBTQI+ people were listed as “targets of potential violence,” which DHS warned could be “lethal.” Haynes warned the House Oversight Committee during its hearing on “The Rise of Anti-LGBTQI+ Extremism and Violence in the United States,” that “thoughts and prayers alone are not saving lives.
They are not changing the rhetoric of hate. None of us ever imagined that our little bar in Colorado Springs would be the target of the next hate crime.
