The Colorado Republican Party sent an anti-LGBTQ+ email to supporters this week with a video that included an allusion to a virulently anti-gay religious organization, sparking criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. Amid the backlash, the party then called for the burning of pride flags.
Monday's email, titled "God hates pride," repeats anti-LGBTQ+ smears and includes a video from a pastor expressing similar views. That video's title image reads "God hates flags," an apparent reference to the notorious signs using an anti-gay slur that the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church carried to protests and to American servicemembers' funerals.
The email, which coincided with the beginning of Pride Month, is signed by Dave Williams, a former state representative and the state GOP's elected chair. Williams is also running in the Republican primary for the 5th Congressional District, representing Colorado Springs. The state party, run by Williams, has endorsed him in that race.
It's not Williams' first time espousing anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. During Pride Month last year, the party sent a similar email. When he was a student and serving as student body president of the University of Colorado's Colorado Springs campus, Williams was impeached for refusing to sign off on an approved appropriation to an LGBTQ+ club.
This latest email immediately drew condemnation.
Valdamar Archuleta, a congressional candidate who leads the Colorado chapter of the LGBT group Log Cabin Republicans, said in a statement that he was rejecting the state party's endorsement of his candidacy for the Denver-based 1st Congressional District. Though he said he had his own criticisms of Pride celebrations, he felt the email went too far.
"I personally found it very troubling," Archuleta wrote on his Facebook page. "I spoke with many LGBT and non LGBT Republicans (on Monday) who also found the message in the email disgusting and offensive. This email does NOT Represent the Republican voters of Colorado."
Curtis Gardner, an at-large city councilman in Aurora, posted on social media that the Republican Party "no longer stands for the issues I care about." Shad Murib, the chair of the Colorado Democratic Party, called the email "bigotry."
Nadine Bridges, the executive director of the LGBTQ+ group One Colorado, said it was "hateful."
"I just think it's just one way to get clicks. It's a talking point to demonstrate to the far right, to these conservative activists, that this is what they believe in," she said Thursday. "And the thing I continuously say is rather than attacking the LGBTQ+ community, in this case LGBTQ+ Coloradans, what they should be doing is focusing on real issues. Housing, access to food, clean water. This is just a smokescreen to create obstacles, to not see the things they're not doing for Coloradans."
In a statement texted to The Denver Post on Thursday, Williams doubled down on the attacks and said he "made no apologies for saying God hates pride." He said that "the only backlash we see is coming from radical Democrats, the fake news media and weak Republicans who bow down at the feet of leftist cancel culture."
After the initial email was released, the party posted a social media message calling for the burning of pride flags.
Rocky Mountain Equality, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, condemned that post and the party's other attacks and said the "fight for equality for all people is far from over." In November, Colorado voters will decide whether to remove anti-same-sex marriage language from the state constitution, while opposition groups are seeking to put their own anti-transgender questions on the ballot.
"As we enter Pride Month, a time for the LGBTQ community to celebrate who we are and find connection with others, some groups would still wipe us from existence if they could," Rocky Mountain Equality's executive director, Mardi Moore, wrote in a statement. "We know that these extremist groups do not represent all Coloradans, but that doesn't make statements like the Republican Party's call to burn Pride flags or the rhetoric from the anti-LGBTQ activists leading efforts to put hateful measures on our November ballots any less harmful."
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