Last year, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, an armed pro-gun group made a big statement in Dallas’s Oak Lawn neighborhood,otherwise known as Dallas’s “gayborhood.”
I watched from a Kroger parking lot as people clad in dark military gear unloaded semiautomatic rifles from car trunks. They started marching down the street carrying their rifles, along with pink, white and blue flags. I approached and found out they were members of a local LGBTQ+ gun rights group.
As hatred and intolerance were rising in America, they told me, they had a duty to show they were unafraid to protect themselves and their communities.
There can be no doubt that we live in time of increasing attacks on the social progress made by LGBTQ+ people. The media often euphemizes the oppression of these groups as “culture wars.” The killing last week of a California woman over her choice to display a Pride flag outside her shop reminds us why the term is such a linguistic injustice.
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Because, in the real world, wars mean guns. Wars mean death.
Follow this authorKaren Attiah's opinionsAs the drumbeat of hate rises, why shouldn’t the oppressed stand ready to defend themselves against violence?
According to reports, 66-year-old Laura Ann Carleton had nonviolently defended her turf against homophobic attacks before. Numerous times people tore down the pride flags she flew at her clothing shop in Cedar Glen, Calif., about 80 miles from Los Angeles. But each time she just put new flags up. While Carleton did not identify as LGBTQ+, she was respected as an ally of the community.
Last week again brought the culture war to her doorstep — only this time the violence was no metaphor. After Travis Ikeguchi began arguing with Carleton over her store’s Pride flag, the 27-year-old man shot Carleton, killing her. Ikeguchi fled and was later killed by police after opening fire on them.
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Now, would Carlton be alive if she had used a gun? Impossible to say. But given the rise in hate crimes in recent years, the appeal of LGBTQ+ gun groups like the one I saw in Dallas is understandable. And frankly, the call for LGBTQ+ people to arm themselves is not new to anyone who has been paying attention.
After the passage of anti-hate-crime legislation in the late 1990s, some said the laws did not go far enough. Writing for Salon in 2000, Jonathan Rauch argued that in states that allow concealed carry, “homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible.”
Rauch goes on to write, “Guns can … emancipate them from their image — often internalized — of cringing weakness. Pink pistols, I’ll warrant, would do far more for the self-esteem of the next generation of gay men and women than any number of hate-crime laws or anti-discrimination statutes.”
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Tough talk. But, as they say, points were made.
Now, more than 20 years later, LGBTQ+ people are facing a vicious backlash. The Department of Homeland Security reports that threats of violence against them are rising sharply. According to a UCLA study, LGBTQ+ people are nine times more likely to be victims of violent crime than others. Using crime data from 2017 to 2019, the study found that the “majority of LGBT violent hate crime victims are women (61%) and the majority of offenders are male (74%).”
According to a 2020 study in California, LGBTQ+ gun owners are more likely to say they own guns for self-defense than owners in the general population. In that state, LGBTQ+ owners have concealed-carry permits, and carry their weapons, at higher rates than other gun owners.
But there is another layer of risk for LGBTQ+ people who identify/present as women and/or are people of color. We know that women face harsher criminal justice penalties for using guns to shoot or kill their attackers, who are usually male. Case in point: In 2011, Ky Peterson, a Black trans man, shot and killed a man who he says attacked and sexually assaulted him in Georgia, which has a “stand your ground” law. Peterson was arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison. (He was released in 2020.)
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As anti-LGBTQ+ violence increases, I think often these days of the pro-gun marchers, and of pro-LGBTQ+ martyrs such as Carleton. It can be hard to accept that more guns are part of the answer to America’s epidemic of gunfire. But personally, I have nothing but support and sympathy for the right of LGBTQ+ people to do what they need to do to feel safe, even if that means considering arming themselves.
Because as the wars heat up, LGBTQ+ people deserve to feel safe, not sacrificed.
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