Focus on the Family, an evangelical organization in Colorado Springs, was recently vandalized in response to the mass shooting at the LGBTQ nightclub. Donate now. After the shooting, Focus on the Familys president, Jim Daly, said that like the rest of the community he was mourning the tragedy. The suspect had been to Club Q in 2021 and 2022 at least six times before the shooting, Joines said, and on Nov. 19 bought a ticket for a drag show there. The shooting happened just after 7 p.m. at the Alta Convenience Store near the intersection of Palmer Park Boulevard and Potter Drive. Learn more about Willis here. Refusing to acknowledge someones humanity in death adds insult to injury, according to GLAAD, compounding the tragedy by invalidating the persons lived reality.. We urge everyone to pray for peace and we also pray for the individual or group responsible for this mischievous and unwarranted defacing of our ministry's property.". broadcast ministry Focus on the Family is a global Christian ministry dedicated to helping families thrive. Heres why its harmful to misgender LGBTQ victims of crime, and why its important that Colorado Springs police took steps to honor LGBTQ advocates wishes and treat the Club Q victims with sensitivity and respect. Club Q was more than a night out. Focus on the Family is privileged to be one of many organizations in our city positioned to help and support the needs of struggling individuals and families. Focus on the Family's Colorado Springs, Colorado, headquarters was vandalized on Thanksgiving with a message blaming the group for a recent mass Sam Metz, Associated Press Copyright 2023 KKTV. Photo by Trevor Hughes/USA Today. Your effort and contribution in providing this feedback is much We urge everyone to pray for peace and we also pray for the individual or group responsible for this mischievous and unwarranted defacing of our ministrys property.. Metz reported from Salt Lake City. The SPLC used that radical Islamic terrorist attack to demonize conservative Christians. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Group claiming responsibily for graffiti points to Focus on the Familys legacy of hateful theology, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile, Related video: Police identify Colorado Springs shooting victims by how they identified themselves. Tyler O'Neil This is a time for prayer, grieving and healing, not vandalism and the spreading of hate. It unearthed memories of hearing things about LGBTQ people she saw as hateful and inciting. WebStop in today so we may find what can help you, and your family, fully serve Christs Kingdom. Not for the "stupid price" of $150 an acre foot. The Club Q shooting suspect identifies as nonbinary. The message reads: "Their blood is on your hands. Now hes grieving the loss of Rump and Aston, both of whom were slain in the club shooting. Have an opinion about this article? Newcomers began lobbying for policies like getting rid of school Halloween celebrations due to suspicions about the holidays pagan origins. Someone spray-painted the sign in front of the Colorado Springs-based Christian organization. Not for the "stupid price" of $150 an acre foot. Contrary to SPLC insinuations, groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council dont hate LGBT people or wish them dead. The suspect accused of killing five people in Read the full story on the Denver Channels website. It is important to us that you understand why Focus on the Family must be held accountable for the ramifications of their hateful theology, the statement adds, pointing to the organisations support for legislation targeting transgender people, its falsified research and support for so-called conversation therapy. In the 1990s, Colorado Springss Focus on the Family led the fundamentalist charge in support of Amendment 2, a Colorado ballot measure that banned municipalities from including LGBTQ people in their anti-discrimination policies. Introducing the victims as they lived was a way to represent them with compassion and dignity, Castro told CNN. Many news outlets cited Dalys condemnation of the shooting, but the Southern Poverty Law Center notably did not. 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WebPosted 6:25:16 PM. A person pauses to pay respects at a makeshift memorial in November 2022, near Club Q. Though the initiative passed in 1992, in 1995 the Supreme Court found that it violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio of Florida. All Rights Reserved. The Colorado Springs Police Department identified the five people killed at Club Q as. Focus on the Family's Colorado Springs, Colorado, headquarters was vandalized on Thanksgiving with a message blaming the group for a recent mass shooting that killed five people and injured 18 others. Evidence markers are placed where a victim was found near Club Q. Paige H., Tyler Johnston, Keenan Mestas-Holmes and Altas Pretzeus embrace while paying their respects at a memorial in Colorado Springs on Sunday. For years its marketed itself as an outdoorsy boomtown with a population set to top Denvers by 2050. Newsweek has reached out to the Colorado Springs Police Department for comment. People pay their respects at a memorial display set up to remember the five victims of the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Tuesday, November 22. This is a time for prayer, grieving and healing, not vandalism and the spreading of hate. The suspect accused of killing five people in an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs ran a neo-Nazi website and used anti-gay slurs, a police detective testified on Wednesday. Some conservative lawmakers and leaders have supported anti-LGBTQ legislation rooted in the same harmful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric espoused by extremist groups. Police chief Adrian Vasquez took a basic but still relatively uncommon step when announcing the names of the five victims killed at Club Q, the beloved LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs. When the spray-painted message was shared on Twitter, several users supported the vandalism. AP writers Brittany Peterson and Jesse Bedayn in Colorado Springs contributed. apprehended by club patrons Richard Fierro and Thomas James, comes from a conservative Republican family, Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. We recognize the community is hurting in the aftermath of the reckless and violent actions of a very disturbed individual, part of a statement from Focus on the Family President Jim Daly reads. For some, concealing ones name or gender identity may be a matter of personal safety or job security. Please keep your comments respectful and relevant. At a preliminary hearing on Wednesday, prosecutors for the first time provided evidence related to why they charged 22-year-old Anderson Aldrich with hate crimes as well as murder in the Nov. 19, 2022, shooting at Club Q. Police said there was no information about who might have vandalized the sign, according to The Gazette. Join the millions of people who benefit from The Daily Signals fair, accurate, trustworthy reporting with direct access to: Dont have time to read the Washington Post or New York Times? Colorado Springs native Ashlyn May, who grew up in a Christian church but left when it didnt accept her queer identity, said one woman from the group in the tent asked if she could pray for her and a friend who accompanied her to the memorial. In the early 20th century, newcomers sought to establish a resort town in the shadow of Pikes Peak. The Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family is a proponent of family and moral values. David Zalubowski / AP. In the 1990s it became known as a home base for evangelical nonprofits and Christian ministries including the broadcast ministry Focus on the Family and the Fellowship of Christian Cowboys. Candidate name: Tom Strand. The families of the five individuals killed in Saturday nights senseless attack are in our prayers. appreciated. People visit a makeshift memorial Monday on a corner near the site of the mass shooting. It may be short-term political gain, but with our community, it comes with real lived consequences.. Joe Biden Turns Americas Government Into Wokeness Inc. David Zalubowski / AP. Hours & Location Hours: Mon Fri : 9am 5:30pm Sat: 9am 5pm Closed Sunday Address: 8685 Explorer Drive Colorado Springs, CO 80920-1051 Phone: (719)-531-3464 E-mail: Bookstore.Associate@fotf.org Available Products Adventures in This is a time for prayer, grieving and healing, not vandalism and the spreading of hate, Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, said in a statement shared with The Independent. Some trans people dont seek to change their legal names on identifying documents because of economic or logistical barriers, according to the ACLU. Instead of relying on IDs or legal identifiers, Vasquez and the police department communicated with victims families through victim advocates, who provided the names and pronouns by which their loved ones were known, Colorado Springs Police Department spokesperson Pamela Castro told CNN in an email. It is unclear if anyone has died as a result of the shooting or if there are more victims involved. Priester-Collins is sharing her story only now as the suspected shooters preliminary trial begins because she says shes worried this community is forgetting them with such a focus on the suspected shooter. The SPLC did not respond to The Daily Signals request for comment on the Focus on the Family vandalism, and the center doesnt appear to have condemned it publicly. Campaign phone number: 719-210-1607. Stephanie Vigil was just elected to represent Colorado Springs in the state legislature. The sign of the Colorado Springs headquarters of the evangelical Christian ministry Focus on the Family was defaced days after a gunman attacked the citys sole LGBTQ+ nightclub. The accused, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, was also injured and taken to a local hospital. My book Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center traces how the SPLCoriginally a public-interest legal nonprofit representing poor people in the Southbecame a juggernaut of political fundraising, in part by suing white supremacist organizations into bankruptcy and then using that work to exaggerate the threat of hate groups and to scare donors into ponying up cash. A sign on the property of the Colorado-based evangelical organisation Focus on the Family was vandalised with graffiti reading blood is on your hands and fives lives taken, an apparent reference to a mass shooting inside a Colorado Springs LGBT+ nightclub that left five dead and injured 18 others. We urge everyone to pray for peace and we also pray for the individual or group responsible for this mischievous and unwarranted defacing of our ministrys property.. COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) When officials unfurled a 25-foot rainbow flag in front of Colorado Springs City Hall this week, people gathered to mourn the victims of a mass shooting at a popular gay club couldnt help but reflect on how such a display of support would have been unthinkable just days earlier. There must be a willingness to learn about the full lives of those taken from us for the sake of respecting and honoring their lives.. The Orange County Sheriffs Department did not immediately respond to CNNs request for comment on their handling of Gardens case. We will not go back into any closet. In an article by The Gazette, police confirmed a message was spray-painted in black paint onto a Focus on the Family sign at the ministry's headquarters in Colorado Springs. In another PDF handout, Focus on the Family encourages parents to tell their children that "Sin has confused them; they need God's help to follow Him," when discussing same-sex couples. Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton joined The Denver Post in January 2022 as a business reporter, focusing her coverage on social inequities in business. She said yes. Subscribe to Heres the Deal, our politics Opponents of these events often use language that conflates drag performers with trans people and dehumanizes LGBTQ people. Five lives taken.". I think in a pluralistic culture now, the idea is: How do we all live without treading on each other? Daly said. She testified that she believes the suspect modeled the Club Q shooting after the shootings they posted on their neo-Nazi website. The families of the five individuals killed in Saturday nights senseless attack are in our prayers. Police told 11 News partner The Gazette that the statement was spray-painted at some point during the wee hours of Thursday morning. Despite the suspects identifying as nonbinary and going by Mx. Still, he noted signs that the city was more culturally conservative than others of similar size and much of Colorado: Colorado Springs is kind of an outlier, he said. A non-profit worker with a 'huge heart.' The shooting at Club Q occurred at a time when anti-LGBTQ sentiment continues to flare across the US. Stephen Groves, Associated Press. Springs police say they do not have any suspects in the vandalism. But the shooting at Club Q only reinforced a commitment to defending LGBTQ constituents, Vigil said. She said she found community at Club Q when she would come back from college, but that sense of belonging didnt allow her to forget that people and groups with a history of anti-LGBTQ stances and rhetoric maintained influence in city politics. But that may be irrelevant in court; as the Associated Press noted, hate crime laws focus on the victims, not the perpetrators. (In a Monday press conference identifying the victims, department representatives refrained from using gender-specific pronouns to describe the suspect. But police making the effort to get it right, particularly now, when anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is rampant, is meaningful. In the 1940s, military bases arrived. COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KDVR) Two days after a shooter killed six people and then himself, police have released the names of those killed and the details of COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - Phylisha Priester-Collins, her daughter and a friend were inside Club Q when gunfire interrupted their lives and The nonprofit organization has an evangelical focus. It is no accident that this happened in Colorado Springs, a city steeped in homophobia, transphobia, and white supremacy.. But in the face of anti-LGBTQ discrimination and hostility, many Colorado Springs residents established LGBTQ funds and advocacy groups, Colorado Springs Indy columnist Brandon Flanery wrote in 2020. PUBLISHED: February 22, 2023 at 9:05 a.m. | UPDATED: February 22, 2023 at 9:06 a.m. COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. Five people were hospitalized It feels like the city is kind of at this tipping point, said Candace Woods, a queer minister and chaplain who has called Colorado Springs home for 18 years. Anderson Lee Aldrich in court documents, many on the Left blamed conservatives and Christians for the attack, and vandals targeted one prominent conservative Christian group in the city. Shortly after the message was discovered, a Gazette photographer found the sign covered in a plastic sheet. Wilson also suggests that some evangelical churches should lose their nonprofit status for electioneering in support of fundamentalist candidates in school board elections. He notes that the SPLCs hate map lists four anti-LGBTQ hate groups, including two headquartered in Colorado Springs: the Family Research Institute and the Pray in Jesus Name Project. In one of the organization's PDF handouts, Focus on the Family writes: "The Bible also teaches that sin has entered the world and affects every area of life. / More than one-third of residents are nonwhite twice as many as in 1980. Colorado Springs shooting victims The Colorado Springs Police Department identified the five people killed at Club Q as: Raymond Green Vance (he/him) Jessy Smith Cruz embraces Jadzia Dax McClendon in Colorado Springs on Sunday. Priester-Collins watched the preliminary hearing remotely because she was unsure she would be able to stay calm inside the courtroom with the person accused in the attack sitting feet away. 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