Transgender Minnesotans on alert after Annunciation Church shooting

MINNEAPOLIS — Business was so slow at Roxy’s Cabaret on Wednesday that the weekly Mario Kart 8 battles were canceled. The upstairs bar had served only four customers before 8 p.m. Staffers blamed the State Fair and remarkable weather for the sparse attendance.

But there was also a sense at the downtown Minneapolis club and other LGBTQ-friendly places in town that the transgender community was laying low in light of conservative commentary about the Annunciation Church killings.

The shooting suspect, Robin Westman, 23, legally changed her name in 2020. Westman’s mother sought the change, court records show, because her child “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”

Well-known conservatives on TV and social media have been quick to call the trans community a hotbed for mental illness.

“There’s going to be an impact,” said bartender Van Garrett. “People are going to put their own spin on it.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem used their platforms to equate being trans with mental illness and called for gun restrictions for trans people.

Jesse Watters on his Fox News program falsely said: “Statistically, the trans population has been prone to violence. That’s not villainizing. That’s reality and if you can’t recognize reality then you’re in danger.”

He pointed to the 2023 school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, in a which a transgender man killed three children and three adults.

The conservative rhetoric doesn’t square with the statistics.

According to Gun Violence Archive, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that collects data from more than 7,500 law enforcement sources daily, only 1.1% of mass-shooting suspects over the past decade were transgender, roughly proportional with the overall population of transgender people. Data gathered by the Violence Prevention Project shows 98% of mass shooters are men.

That hasn’t stopped some politicians and activists in calling for guns to be taken away from transgender people.

Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA and leading right-wing activist, said on X that people wanting to medically transition to a different sex shouldn’t be allowed to own a firearm.

Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., the House majority whip, steered the conversation from gun control to Minnesota’s passage of the Trans Refuge Act in 2023, asserting the law “exacerbated” mental health issues statewide.

Emmer went on to make the issue the basis of a partisan attack, saying, “If a gun wasn’t going to be available, clearly based on this young man, what little we know of it right now, he would have found another way to commit a heinous act like this. That wasn’t going to stop him, and that’s not what caused the problem. What caused the problems is all the transgender confusion that Tim Walz and his Democrat colleagues are causing.”

Such attacks, often fueled by misinformation, are certain to affect those in the Twin Cites who are transgender or allies of the community.

According to UCLA’s Williams Institute, a think tank that researches gender identity, 1.21% of Minnesotans identify as transgender, the highest population of any state.

Minneapolis resident Katie, who is married to a trans woman, said she has already gotten a taste of the vitriol.

When she brought flowers to Annunciation Church roughly eight hours after the shooting, she said she found herself next to a man who used vulgar language to express his mistaken belief that Gov. Walz had forced children to have gender-affirming surgeries against their will.

“I pushed back to say that there has not been significant violence from the trans community, so it wasn’t fair to be scapegoating a community for the actions of one person,” said Katie, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of becoming a target. “I told him that this doesn’t reflect the values of any queer people I know.”

Katie and her wife recently moved to the Twin Cities from Indiana in hopes of finding a safer, more welcoming community.

“Many of us arrived in Minnesota because we were afraid of violence, so the murder and destruction that happened today is the last thing any of us would want to happen,” she said. “We just want it to stop.”

More than a dozen leaders of advocacy groups, including OutFront Minnesota, Gender Justice and the Council on LGBTQIA2s+ Minnesotans, met digitally twice Wednesday to pen a letter of support for Annunciation School. They also urged people not to fall for misinformation.

“We also recognize that some may use this tragedy to continue to target trans communities,” the letter said. ”We condemn this attempt to divide us in this moment when we should be engaging in solidarity and love to those impacted. Acts of violence are not inherent to one identity or experience.“

Kat Rohn, executive director of OutFront, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ organization, said the discussions also focused on the need for increased security and support from one another over the next few weeks.

“We recognize that this is a moment where there will be an increase in harmful rhetoric and even threats of violence” toward trans people, Rohn said Thursday.

Some local businesses have rallied around those who may be targeted.

A Bar Of Their Own, the Minneapolis bar that caters to fans of women’s sports, posted a message of support on Facebook.

“There is going to be unbelievably hurtful rhetoric spewed about trans folks following this tragedy and we will NOT tolerate the hate,” the message read. “You are worthy. You are valued. You are loved.”

Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, said she’s hearing from plenty of constituents about the need for more gun control. But she’s also talking to parents who are worried about how people will treat their transgender children.

“People are concerned. They’re concerned in every direction, and they’re scared for their safety,” said Finke, one of Minnesota’s first openly transgender legislators. “Of course we are.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey used part of his Wednesday news conference to ask people to focus on the victims rather than hate speech.

Duluth native Venus de Mars, one of punk music’s first openly transgender artists, applauded Frey’s comments. But de Mars, who founded the band All the Pretty Horses, remains concerned about her community.

“I am already seeing the diminishing dialogue unfolding online,” de Mars said in a phone interview from New York, where she recently performed. “I believe it’s very possible that my trans brothers and sisters, already exhausted from aggressive political attacks, are quite literally holding their breaths.”

(Allison Kite of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.)