When I was in high school, a boy named Matthew Shepard was murdered, beaten, and left tied to a fence in Wyoming because he was gay. I grew up in a culture that felt like I wasn’t that far from that world, both culturally and geographically. Northwestern New Mexico and Wyoming had a lot in common.
I’ve been on the go since I was little and never went into the closet.
One of my most vivid memories from high school is of my geometry teacher pulling me aside after class one day. He just told me very quietly that I needed to protect myself and be careful not to “be like Matthew Shepard.”
He was very sincere and meant it in a very kind way. I believe that this can happen to people like me. That violence is already somewhere on the horizon, and with proper visibility management we may be able to avoid it. My father had already taught me how to fight and I understood that I needed to protect myself, but I wouldn’t be so good if I faced a group that wanted me dead. After high school, I left home as soon as I could afford to make enough money to move to New York and never went to college. I can’t imagine children in the LGBTQ+ community going to school today with the same fear I endured for so many years.
With blood on their hands, American politicians are still packing. anti-LGBTQ+ laws It permeates the entire system at an unprecedented pace. people are attacked. people are being killed. And for what? A cheap political talking point with an out-of-control evangelical base?
A 19-year-old transgender student attending the University of Washington. juniper blessingHe was stabbed to death this spring. Another devastated family suddenly found themselves grieving in public as strangers debated online whether their child’s very existence was political.
At the same time, Ohio lawmakers pushed to restrict Medicaid coverage for transgender people, inserting the state directly into the health care access system while delivering carefully rehearsed speeches about “child protection” and “fiscal responsibility.”
A transgender teenager in Colorado was forced to skip a school trip after adults deemed her presence a liability. Bree Frum has withdrawn from her parliamentary campaign after months of escalating harassment over her transgender public life. In Minneapolis, lesbian mother Renee Goode was shot and killed by federal agents, but her family continues to demand accountability from the same government, insisting there was nothing real about the hostilities. 74-year-old transgender man killed in hit-and-run after argument in San Francisco. another Transgender woman murdered in Virginia. The other is New York. The other is Illinois. A Florida man has been charged with beating a 5-year-old boy “because he was gay.” Lawmakers in Kansas are pushing a bill that would essentially impose civil penalties on transgender people for using the bathroom. Schools are under pressure to force parents to remove transgender students despite safety concerns. Pride celebrations have been canceled because organizers no longer trust the surrounding country enough to keep people alive. A library that requires police presence because someone is dragging a book. Hospital receives bomb threat for providing gender-affirming medical care. Churches displaying rainbow flags were threatened with arson.
What should queer kids take from this? What should straight kids take from this? What should we take away from all this? What are we supposed to think when we see people debating whether our lives even deserve legal recognition at all, while those who threaten us continue to receive microphones, promotions, television contracts, campaign contributions, and state protection?
Lawmakers have introduced bill after bill targeting transgender health care, transgender students, transgender athletes, transgender teachers, transgender military service, transgender bathroom access, legal recognition of transgender people, and transgender visibility itself, all of which they claim does not constitute discrimination. Governors smiling at the signing ceremony while children are used as political scenery. The school board erupted into a shouting match over pronouns, and armed protesters gathered outside the library because someone planned a drug story time. The entire media ecosystem has spent years portraying queer people as predators, corrupters, a threat to civilization, a threat to Christianity, a threat to our children, a threat to the nation itself, and then stands bemused every time someone finally decides to translate that rhetoric into actual bloodshed.
And this country has become so saturated with it that almost nothing shocks anyone anymore.
Bomb threat against hospital. Bomb threat against children’s hospital. Bomb threat against Pride event. Teachers lose their jobs. Librarians were harassed and ostracized from the community. My parents investigated. A medical worker was stalked. Queer creators describe social media platforms as permanent surveillance systems rather than public spaces There, harassment campaigns, identity theft, algorithmic oppression, death threats, and coordinated press attacks have become indistinguishable from normal online participation. TikTok influencers openly fantasize about eradication, selling supplements and protein powders in between ranting about “degeneration.” Podcasters joke about civil war scenarios as if they were discussing fantasy football. Politicians treated queer people like a recurring campaign prop, deployed every election cycle to stimulate the same fear mechanisms.
Legislation is violence. Propaganda is violence. Algorithms are violence. The hearing is violent. Jokes are violence. The constant framing of queer people as contamination, danger, instability, corruption, social decay, moral contagion, demographic threat, and ideological poison. It’s all violence.
Eventually someone hears it all and decides they are participating in a moral act. Eventually, someone decides to protect society. Eventually, someone decides that the violence was already socially sanctioned long before it was physically carried out.
According to FBI hate crime dataincidents stemming from sexual orientation and gender identity bias have increased significantly over the past decade, and anti-LGBTQ+ crimes remain among the most frequently reported hate crime categories in the United States.
Organizations like GLAAD tracked more than 930 anti-LGBTQ incidents from May 2024 to April 2025 alone.Assault, bomb threats, arson, vandalism, murder, etc. More than half specifically targeted transgender and gender nonconforming people.
At the same time, the federal government has begun to absorb some of that rhetoric directly into its own security framework.
Under the second Trump administration, government agencies have increasingly prioritized monitoring what officials and the conservative groups they work with have described as “radical pro-trans ideology” or “violent, secular political groups.” These statements are heavily influenced by lobbying efforts associated with the Heritage Foundation and related organizations, which are pushing for the creation of a category called “transgender ideologically inspired violent extremism” (TIVE).
And once again, this administration is declaring open season on transgender people.
we We lost Jason Collins this week.. He is the first openly gay player in NBA history. When Collins came out in 2013, he explained that he wore the number 98 in honor of Matthew Shepard, a boy who was tortured and murdered in Wyoming in 1998.
Suddenly, the distance between then and now doesn’t seem so far away. An entire generation of queer people grew up believing that America was slowly moving away from this kind of hatred. And now, as bomb threats, hate crimes, public harassment and state targeting become a reality again, the next generation is growing up watching politicians debate whether their existence should be legal at all.
So what should they do? Keep your head down? Be careful not to become like Matthew Shepard? That should horrify all Americans.
Josh Ackley He is a political strategist and frontman of the queer punk band Dead Bettys. @momdarkness @toyota_twittti
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