Colorado GOP Calls LGBTQ+ People “Godless Groomers,” Says to Burn Pride Flags
RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
The Colorado GOP has been gearing up for Pride Month the best way that Republicans know how: with some wildly homophobic public messaging.
In a thread posted to X last Monday, Denver-based journalist Kyle Clark, who hosts the nightly show Next With Kyle Clark on local NBC affiliate station KUSA, brought an email newsletter from the Colorado GOP to public attention. Per Clark’s screenshot, the mass email refers to LGBTQ+ people as “godless groomers in our society.” It also includes a video of a sermon by evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll, who made headlines after being accused of plagiarism and workplace abuse, and who has declared “war on the LGBT agenda.”
The thumbnail for the video shows an image of Jesus, with eyes glowing bright red, superimposed over a rainbow flag with the text “GOD HATES FLAGS.” The sermon appears to be titled “Should Christians fly the rainbow flag” — we'll let you guess where he landed on that — and is part of a series of sermons by Driscoll titled “Black & White in a Rainbow World.”
The email also includes a “warning” to those who are “easily triggered, or intolerant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ” and specifically mentions Clark — who previously reported on and posted on social media about the group, and who frequently critiques both national and local Republican politics on his show.
In response to Clark, the official X account for the Colorado Republican Party quoted his post about the mass email on Monday with a GIF of animated flames, writing, “Burn all the #pride flags this June.”
Clark subsequently wrote on X that the call to burn the Pride flags “reflects that the state party’s allegiance is to the values of state chairman Dave Williams, even more so than those of Donald Trump.” Williams, who currently serves as the chair of Colorado’s GOP, supported a 2020 measure to ban same-sex marriage, and created an issue committee (the method by which Coloradans advocate for or against getting an issue onto the ballot) in 2023 to ban gender-affirming care for minors.
This isn’t the first anti-LGBTQ+ email from the Colorado Republican Party in recent weeks. On May 21, the state’s GOP sent out a fundraising email calling on parents to pull their children out of public schools in order to “save Colorado children from progressive Democrats who want to turn more kids trans by requiring teachers to use ‘pronouns’ that do not make any sense and cause gender confusion,” per The Hill.
The email specifically took aim at a recent law signed by Democratic Governor Jared Polis, but as the Denver Post pointed out, the legislation has nothing to do with pronouns, and instead concerns students’ rights to use chosen names at school, which is not exclusive to trans students.
Colorado has long been a stronghold of conservatism in the American West, especially the city of Colorado Springs, where more than 50 Christian groups were headquartered as of 2021, including the anti-LGBTQ+ group Focus on the Family. Additionally, in November 2022 a mass shooter killed five people and injured 25 at the Colorado Springs LGBTQ+ nightclub Club Q, a rare haven for queer and trans people in the area.
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