After Army Vet’s Heroic Actions in a Gay Bar, GOP Lawmakers Release Anti-Woke Manifesto – By Elizabeth Howe & Bradley Peniston (Defense One) / Nov 23, 2022
As violence and threats rise against LGBTQ+ people, 10 senators join bill to roll back a Pentagon diversity-and-inclusion effort.
Two days after a U.S. Army veteran took down a man spraying bullets in a Colorado gay club, a pair of Republican lawmakers released a report accusing the Biden administration of “weakening America’s warfighters” with wokeness, in part by “promoting LGBTQ+ individuality” in the Defense Department.
On Tuesday, ten GOP senators joined in, co-sponsoring a bill to cut off funding for a Pentagon diversity and inclusion measure. And outside of government, top conservatives from Senate candidates to media personalities to former Trump administration national-security leaders chose, in the wake of the massacre of five club patrons during a drag show, to up their rhetorical assaults on LGBTQ+ Americans, including those who serve in uniform.
Colorado’s latest mass-murder-by-AR-15—allegedly by a right-wing, conspiracy-obsessed 22-year-old—comes amid a rise in violence against LGBTQ+ Americans and a sustained campaign, led by right-wing Christian politicians, of rhetoric and legislation intended to isolate and demonize them. “Extremist candidates and their well-funded allies have spent at least $50 million in political ads spreading disinformation and attacking LGBTQ+ people — and especially transgender youth — in the 2022 midterm elections,” by Human Rights Campaign’s count.
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