Panic Erupts Over Guns at Pride. Gun Toting Proud Boys Threaten Kids.

Major Pride events disrupted. Extremists go after small children.

Panic over reported gunshots, and a gun, at weekend Pride events

Chaos broke out over the weekend in New York City and San Francisco as participants at the two largest, oldest U.S. Pride parades panicked over reported gunfire. In Nevada, masked Proud Boys threatened a group of small children and their parents observing Pride, causing the families to flee in panic.

According to the Washington Post, “loud noises” on Sunday sent Pride crowds in New York’s Washington Square Park “fleeing and nearly caused a stampede.”

Some witnesses, who reported minor injuries requiring medical attention, say “nearly” misses the mark. The noises were later determined to be fireworks, according to parade organizers, who suggest ongoing threats of violence had Pride attendees on edge.

Thousands flee San Francisco Pride

On Saturday, panic broke out at San Francisco Pride, as reported by Kylie Robison of Insider, who was there. “I was at pride, she tweeted, “and people started screaming, running, saying there was shots fired. I started running with the crowd but its just wild to live in a country where we’re all prepared to run or die like that.”

According to NBC News, San Francisco Pride ended early after somebody started spraying mace near the San Francisco Civic Center: “The incident caused a panic and in the hour that followed there were reports of street brawls as people left the event.”

Other reports suggest people stampeded over sounds of gunfire. A security guard told NBC that “two stampedes broke out with crowds running for the exits amid rumors of a gun.”

Details are unclear, but it appears no shots were fired. Reports of mace are conflicting and unconfirmed, but the fear and panic were very real.

“I was at the SF pride event with my son,” one witness comments. “I can only describe it as World War Z type of panic. At first a group of a few hundred sprinters dodged through the area near the exit. The second wave was thousands of people, many crying, most in fear running to the exits.”

Children flee Nevada Pride event when Proud Boy approaches with a gun

So far as reporters are able to confirm, no actual guns were involved in the San Francisco and NYC Pride stampedes, but on Sunday, Proud Boys protesters menaced a Pride event at the Sparks Library in Reno, Nevada. Multiple news sources, including the LA Blade, report that a group of Proud Boys disrupted a drag queen story hour, chanting obscenities and screaming that parents who brought their children to Pride are “groomers” and “molesters.”

Reno police had been monitoring, but when protesters began to drift away, officers reportedly left the scene. Then one of the Proud Boys pulled out a gun and approached the crowd of parents and children. Details are conflicting, some witnesses reporting that the masked man screamed and waved his gun, others that he just held it in his hands as he approached the children.

Witnesses all agree that the families fled into the library, many of the children screaming and crying.

LGBTQ people face rising tides of violence and extremism

Pride observers in NYC and San Francisco may have over-reacted, but not without cause. Most of them were probably aware of a mass shooting early Saturday in Oslo, Norway that claimed the lives of two people and seriously injured ten more outside a popular gay club. Police charged a 42-year-old man with murder, and Oslo’s Pride parade, scheduled for later in the day, was canceled.

Attendees were likely also aware that several U.S. Pride events this year have been menaced by Christian nationalist groups like the Patriot Front, 31 of whom were arrested — with body armor, riot gear, and at least one smoke grenade — on their way to terrorize Pride in Idaho. Groups of masked Proud Boys have terrorized children at several library events this month, including at the San Lorenzo Library in California and at a North Carolina library near Wilmington. Sherriff’s deputies in the latter case tacitly encouraged the Proud Boys, fist bumping them and engaging in casual banter instead of stopping them from screaming at small children.

God, guns, and glory, shout Christian nationalist extremists

Social media is a frightening place to be LGBTQ these days, with conservative Christian leaders openly calling for transgender and gay people to be executed. Their posts and media accounts, like this Steadfast Baptist Church account on Twitter and this one on Facebook, are often left standing by managers at Facebook and Twitter, who cite freedom of religious expression.

Steadfast pastors at several U.S. churches this year have called for LGBTQ people to be killed, and if their threats frighten us, can you blame us? Instead of being arrested and incarcerated or committed, these religious extremists continue to incite violence and call for their supporters to arm themselves.

Gods, guns, and glory is the conservative rallying cry today, which married to rising anti-LGBTQ extremism, makes violent threats sound all the more ominous.

Also ominously, just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a New York State that makes it a crime to carry a concealed firearm without a license. The decision will mean that nearly anyone who wants to carry a gun in public will be able to.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, “This decision isn’t just reckless, it’s reprehensible.”

Maybe that’s what some of those stampeding people in Washington Square were thinking about when they thought they heard gunshots.

Americans of good will have to act together to take our country back

The pro-LGBTQ media organization GLAAD calls for Americans to resist the increasing arming of our society, to protest the recent Supreme Court decision that blocks sensible gun licensing and regulation.

GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis also calls out anti-LGBTQ laws and false propaganda messaging, calling on politicians and social media managers to reign in toxic rhetoric that equates LGBTQ people to sexualizing “groomers” who prey on children:

Ellis says, “Lawmakers and Governors like DeSantis and Abbott, along with their co-conspirators at Fox News, better pause today and recognize that their anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and the nearly 250 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year are responsible for this dangerous climate.”

She adds that “Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and social media platforms must also take responsibility and urgently stop fueling the hate and misinformation that inspire white supremacist groups like the Patriot Front.”

I join Ellis in calling for an end to the vilification of LGBTQ people for political gain. What we saw this weekend in New York City, San Francisco and Reno should be a wakeup call. Do we need another tragic anti-LGBTQ mass shooting like Pulse, or like JUST HAPPENED in Norway, before we confront the dangerous reality of the path we’re on?

What’s the solution? I don’t have all the answers, but I know we must turn out in massive numbers this November to elect an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, which no matter what our political views, is the only way to stop the minority of extremists who now dominate the Republican Party, the only way to bring the increasingly reckless Supreme Court under control.

If we don’t act together now, mark my words, near-future articles won’t be about stampedes at Pride, they’ll be about massacres.

Breaking update: Pink News is reporting that a trans teenager is hospitalized with a fractured skull and brain abnormalities, and that two other people were hospitalized in a terrifying attack after Pride celebrations on Saturday in Dublin, Ireland. Five people in total were attacked at St. Stephen’s Green while celebrating Pride after the official event concluded.

My writing is always free to readers who click my social media links, but if you’d like to browse more, click here to join Medium. Your nominal membership fee will help support my work:

To get an email whenever I publish a new story, Click Here: