It was late in the evening of the 19th of November at Club Q, an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Tending the bar was Derrick Rump and Daniel Aston. DJ T BEATZ was performing in the hours after the “Delusions” drag show featuring a local queen called Del Lusional.
Among the crowd that night were Kelly Loving, Ashley Paugh, and Raymond Green Vance. Vance was at the club for the first time, attending with his girlfriend, her parents, and some of her parent’s family.
That night, someone else would enter the club and open fire. In the aftermath, Aston, Loving, Paugh, Rump, and Vance would be murdered. Eighteen others, including DJ T BEATZ, would be injured.
The club was planning to host an all-ages “Musical Drag Brunch” the next day. Hours after that, was their every Sunday show, “Let’s Do Drag.”
That Sunday, the 20th of November, the “Let’s Do Drag” show intended to offer a “variety of gender identities and performance styles” as part of their celebration of Transgender Day of Remembrance.
This is where the story becomes a bit personal. I founded the Remembering Our Dead project, and that project helped fuel the creation of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. I have grown increasingly worried over the past handful of years that a TDOR would turn into exactly this sort of very American mass shooting event.
Two of the five who were murdered were trans, though I don’t think they were specifically targeted because of their identity. I don’t really think it would matter to the shooter, who seemed to only want to kill.
While we do not know the whole story as to what was going through their mind, we do know that the shooter who killed Aston, Loving, Paugh, Rump, and Vance had a history.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that the shooter went to a LGBTQ club for their rampage — let alone one hosting multiple drag events, including an all-ages event. This is precisely what the right-wing has been pushing for lately.
As we’ve seen a political landscape that uses queer lives as a weapon, that we also see an increase of transphobic and homophobic violence.
This as numerous drag events have been harassed by right-wing groups such as the Proud Boys; this as Boston Children’s Hospital has had to field bomb threats merely for providing gender affirming care.
Lawmakers such as Governors Greg Abbot in Texas and Ron DeSantis in Florida as well as plenty of others have painted LGBTQ people — primarily transgender people as well as drag performers — as the cause of societal decay in this country. They, too, have treated us as less than human.
It only follows that someone would use the kindling they provided to set a fire.
Anderson Lee Aldrich is the shooter’s name. You will note that I am using they/them pronouns for Aldrich: their lawyers have said that is their preference, though there is a mountain of evidence that this may simply be a bit of clever trolling on their part, or possibly a dodge to avoid a hate crime enhancement.
Certainly, a lot of other online trolls rose to this bait, arguing that we have no room to speak of violence, given that the shooter supposedly uses they/them pronouns. As if that would make any difference when one has the blood of five victims on their hands.
At any rate, Aldrich doesn’t fall far from his family tree. They had a run-in with police last year after threatening to blow up their mother’s home, and harm her in the process.
Even though this led to a seven-hour standoff with police, no charges were filed by the local District Attorney, and they were able to avoid Colorado’s “red flag” law preventing access to firearms. It is speculated that this may be, in part, due to influence from their grandfather — outgoing California Assemblyman Randy Voepel.
The neighbor, Xavier Kraus also told the Daily Beast that Aldrich had a history of homophobia, often using the F Slur “from a place of anger.” Again, this also reminds me of Aldrich’s father, Aaron Franklin Brink, who, when they found out that their child had shot up “a gay bar,” worried that Aldrich themselves was gay.
“They started telling me about the incident, a shooting involving multiple people,” said Brink in an interview with KFMB-TV. “And then I go on to find out it’s a gay bar. I said, ‘God, is he gay?’ I got scared, ‘Shit, is he gay?’ And he’s not gay, so I said, ‘Phew.’”
No compassion for the victims of their child’s rampage, just a worry that their own child could have been gay.
In a sane world, this killing would cause a change in tone, but less than 24 hours later, right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson were once again pushing the false notion that LGBTQ people were “sexualizing” children, while hosting the founder of a group called “Gays Against Groomers,” Jaimee Michell, who said that shooting like this would continue to occur, “until we end this evil agenda that is attacking children.”
Podcaster Tim Pool spoke along similar lines.
“We shouldn’t tolerate pedophiles grooming kids. Club Q had a grooming event,” said Pool presumably about the all-ages drag brunch. “How do you prevent the violence and stop the grooming?”
This event should be our wake-up call: we cannot be complacent as the right seeks even more of our blood, and will wait for the next Aldrich to do more of their dirty work.
Gwen Smith hopes you will stay as safe as you can. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com/.