Bars have traditionally been queer people's safest spaces & some of our most dangerous

“Two dead, one injured in gay bar shooting by extremist” screamed the headline of the latest shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub, this time in the Teplaren bar in Slovakia’s capital city of Bratislava. The subheading announced that “The local LGBTQ group called the attack ‘the result of a long and systematic campaign against them by state officials, churches, and extremist groups.’”

The shooter killed two young people and injured one other person. Reports indicate that the suspected shooter was found dead the following day.

When any society defines the “other” as less than human, as disposable, as dangerous, as predatory, that society invariably commits acts of violence and, in some instances, genocidal extermination.

It is not random or coincidental that violence against LGBTQ people often occurs outside or within nightclubs. As marginalized and oft-hunted people with few other places to meet one another, clubs, pubs, and bars have been popular options.

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