A House committee this week in a first of its kind hearing will hear testimony from LGBTQ people and policy experts to examine how a surge in anti-LGBTQ policies and rhetoric has fueled increasing violence against the community.
“Make no mistake, the rise in anti-LGBTQI+ extremism and the despicable policies that Republicans at every level of government are advancing to attack the health and safety of LGBTQI+ people are harming the LGBTQI+ community and contributing to tragedies like what we saw at Club Q,” House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said Monday in a statement announcing Wednesday’s hearing.
The panel will hear firsthand testimony from individuals impacted by anti-LGBTQ attacks, including survivors of last month’s Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs that claimed the lives of five people and a survivor of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando – the deadliest attack on LGBTQ people in U.S. history.
A tidal wave of legislation targeting LGBTQ rights crashed over state legislatures this year, with Republican lawmakers in more than two dozen states introducing over 340 bills seeking to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, ban transgender athletes from sport and limit how LGBTQ issues and identities can be talked about in schools.
A handful of federal lawmakers this year also introduced legislation that would roll back LGBTQ rights.
In August, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) brought up a measure that would make providing gender-affirming medical care to minors a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison. In October, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced he was sponsoring legislation to prohibit federal dollars from being used to make “sexually-oriented” materials — including “any topic” related to sexual orientation or gender identity — available to children under the age of 10.
At the same time, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has proliferated online. An August report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Human Rights Campaign found that inflammatory language directed at LGBTQ people flourished during the first six months of 2022 on mainstream social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook, culminating in real-life violence.
Twitter’s hateful conduct policies were later relaxed after the platform was acquired by billionaire Elon Musk, who has in the past used his account to misgender other users and post content accused of being transphobic.
Musk on Sunday tweeted that his pronouns are “Prosecute/Fauci,” referring to chief White House adviser Anthony Fauci, drawing backlash from LGBTQ people and allies that said the tweet mocked and promoted hate against the community.
Violence against LGBTQ people – particularly transgender people – has increased substantially over the last few years. Hate crimes motivated by bias against sexual orientation and gender identity have spiked by more than 40 percent since 2015, according to federal crime statistics.
The last two years have been the deadliest on record for transgender and gender non-conforming people in the U.S., according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Maloney on Monday said Republicans on the House Oversight Committee and across the country will be forced to face “the real-life impact of their dangerous agenda.”
“I hope LGBTQI+ individuals across the country will see that Democrats in Congress are fighting for them and will continue to push for policies that protect and expand their ability to live authentically and safely,” she said.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story misstated the location of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting. The shooting occurred in Orlando, not Miami.