Barely 24 hours after a gunman killed five people and injured 19 others at a gay bar in Colorado Springs, Elon Musk's new Twitter responded to the massacre by reinstating the account of James Lindsay, the right-wing activist responsible for popularizing the anti-LGBTQ slur "OK groomer," which over the last 10 months has been used to imply that demands for LGBTQ rights or representation are tantamount to child molestation. In August, Lindsay was banned from Twitter for using a variation on the term, which under Twitter's old regime was prohibited as a form of hateful conduct. But by Monday night, not only was Lindsay back, but "OK groomer" was trending on the platform under its new ownership.
Lindsay's reinstatement — alongside a number of other accounts previously suspended for anti-LGBTQ content — was just one response to the massacre at Colorado's Club Q that quickly disappointed any hopes that the massacre might conceivably prompt conservative self-reflection after a year of demonizing LGBTQ people and their allies as pedophiles. Instead, across right-wing news and social media, a few common themes developed: First, that progressives were exploiting the slaughter to score political points; second, that allegations of "grooming" or "pedophilia" in fact have nothing to do with gay people; and third, that if the "grooming" doesn't stop, the violence will continue.
