Pro-hockey player fired after slew of anti-LGBTQ+ tweets

The Peoria Rivermen, a mid-level professional hockey team in Illinois, has fired player Louie Rowe for posting anti-LGBTQ+ tweets. Since his firing, he has re-tweeted numerous messages accusing queer people of grooming, raping, and mutilating children.

“We are shocked, and we have immediately released Louie Rowe,” Rivermen co-owner Bart Rogers told the Lincoln Journal Star after seeing Rowe’s bigoted response to another hockey team’s Pride Night event for LGBTQ+ fans. The team released a rainbow-colored version of its logo before the event.

On January 12, another mid-level pro-hockey team named The Kalamazoo Wings sent a “peace” hand sign emoji to a Twitter user who said they’d no longer attend the team’s games after the team released its rainbow logo on social media.

Get the Daily Brief The news you care about, reported on by the people who care about you.

In response to the team’s peace sign, Rowe wrote via Twitter, “I knew the Kwings were soft but I didn’t know they were gay, trans and soft.”

AdBridg.cmd.push(function() { AdBridg.display("div-gpt-ad-inarticle2"); });

The Kalamazoo Wings Twitter account responded to his comment by writing, “We’ll never stop celebrating the unique and diverse individuals that make the hockey community amazing.”

We'll never stop celebrating the unique and diverse individuals that make the hockey community amazing.

— Kalamazoo Wings (@KalamazooWings) January 13, 2023

Rowe responded with an image that called Pride flags a “mental illness flag.” He also tweeted, “Imagine marketing towards the bottom of the barrel of society LMAO… what’s next? Felony offender night?”

The tweet included an image of a rainbow flag behind statistics vilifying the LGBTQ+ community. The “source” for the statistics, located on the image’s bottom, links to a webpage called “Hatefacts” of allegedly “politically incorrect but true statements.” Most of the “facts” on the page are about Muslims, non-white people, women, and LGBTQ+ people.

pic.twitter.com/kOC9PgyW3X

— Louie Rowe (@LouieRowe17) January 13, 2023

Imagine marketing towards the bottom of the barrel of society LMAO… what’s next? Felony offender night? https://t.co/uga5PBXmhg pic.twitter.com/ikXMGckvoQ

— Louie Rowe (@LouieRowe17) January 13, 2023

Most of the pages’ so-called facts demonize LGBTQ+ communities for their higher rates of abuse, drug use, mental illness, and suicide. Anti-LGBTQ+ activists like to mention such statistics, but never mention how anti-LGBTQ+ hatred contributes to them.

Many of the page’s “facts” were misrepresented from books and studies that are 25 years old or older. Many were also taken from an article in Taki’s Magazine, a now-defunct website that purported to “stand against political correctness.” The Taki’s article refers to homosexuals as “sodomites” and to homosexuality as a “perversion.” The article compares gay people to people who want to have sex with animals, children, and dead bodies. The article was published alongside another article pushing Holocaust denialism.

Some of the other “hate facts” were taken from a website for Seventh-day Adventists, a Christian sect that opposes homosexuality and denies marriage to same-sex couples, and also from The American Thinker, a conservative website that published articles from anti-LGBTQ+ activists, including one that referred to rainbow Doritos as a “gateway snack to introduce children to the joys of homosexuality.”

After firing Rowe, the Rivermen’s co-owner said, “Our organization does not condone that language, nor do we support that point of view or behavior. Those things do not represent the beliefs of our team, our partners nor our fans, nor the great sport we play. It does not represent the values of our organization.”

AdBridg.cmd.push(function() { AdBridg.display("div-gpt-ad-inarticle3"); });

Since his firing, Rowe has retweeted messages supporting transphobic activist Jordan Peterson, anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, and tweets from LibsOfTikTok, an anti-LGBTQ+ social media account that has inspired direct death threats against children’s hospitals, educators, and drag venues.

One of Rowe’s retweeted messages says that LGBTQ+ allies are all “an accessory to child rape.”

AdBridg.cmd.push(function() { AdBridg.display("div-gpt-ad-outstreamplayer"); });