State GOP tells people to “burn all Pride flags” during June

The Colorado Republican Party called LGBTQ+ people “godless groomers” who want to “harm our children” in a recent email to its members. The party has encouraged its members to burn all Pride flags in June and called queer people “Satanic” and “demonic” via social media.

“The month of June has arrived and, once again, the godless groomers in our society want to attack what is decent, holy, and righteous so they can ultimately harm our children,” the Colorado GOP wrote in a recent email highlighted by KUSA journalist Kyle Clark. “These degenerates want to violate our children and their innocence,” the email continued, referring to gender-affirming care as “irreversible” “barbaric medical procedures,” despite the fact that gender-affirming care is reversible and medical procedures are rarely performed on minors.

Related: Suspect wrote anti-LGBTQ+ posts online before he killed a woman for flying the Pride flag

The suspect, who was killed by police, posted multiple images of burning Pride flags on social media.

The email linked to a video entitled “God Hates Flags,” a sermon against LGBTQ+ people delivered by Pastor Mark Driscoll. The video is a play on the slogan “God Hates F**s,” a queerphobic statement often repeated by the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas.

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Since the start of Pride Month, the Colorado GOP has made social media posts on X calling LGBTQ+ people demonic (twice-over), calling Pride month an “abomination,” saying that parents must shield their kids from queer people’s Satanic influence, and attacking the “predatory transgender industry.”

The party’s account has also shared a post from Chaya Raichick, who goes by Libs of TikTok on social media, which claims that the video-sharing website YouTube is trying to “indoctrinate” children by sharing Pride-themed videos. Raichick’s posts influence Republican politicians and often result in death threats against queers, their allies, and schoolchildren. In April 2024, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) added Raichik to its public database of extremists. 

Burn all the #pride flags this June. https://t.co/AqwnudUpYq pic.twitter.com/lLeJMtrhR1

— Colorado Republican Party (@cologop) June 3, 2024

In May, the Colorado GOP told all of its members to remove their children from public school or otherwise educators will turn their kids transgender.

“All Colorado parents should be aiming to remove their kids from public education,” read the email, written by Darcy Schoening, director of special initiatives for the Colorado GOP, KUSA reported. “If your child decides he identifies as a girl because he is angry with you, or all of his friends are doing it, the Colorado government will actively encourage his new fetish by allowing him to identify as ‘she,’ ‘they,’ or whatever nonsensical terms your son’s teachers and peers may dream up.”

Trans identities aren’t a “fetish” nor are they adapted because of peer or parental pressure (a concept called “social contagion” that has been debunked by studies).

Shoeing is also a former leader of the El Paso County, Colorado chapter of Moms for Liberty, a so-called “parents’ rights” group that has been labeled as an anti-LGBTQ+ extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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