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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Dozens of members of the LGBTQ community in Nashville came together on Saturday for a private meeting to grieve and heal amid a palpable and widespread fear since last week’s school shooting.
The meeting’s location was closely guarded because of safety concerns for its participants, some of whom have been afraid to leave their homes and go out in public.
“This particular week has just been a nightmare. Everything from grief, to anger, to sadness,” Rev. RJ Robles, a transgender community organizer who uses he/they pronouns, told the crowd. “This has also been part of the reason why we came together as a community to offer this healing space this evening.”
They had planned to spend Saturday rallying at a march against a new state law that was set to criminalize some drag performances. Then police identified the shooter in the attack at The Covenant School, where three children and three adults were killed, as transgender.
But there is still confusion and misinformation about how exactly Audrey Hale, 28, identified and whether Hale’s gender identity had anything to do with the motivation behind the massacre.
Hours after saying that Hale was transgender, Nashville Police Chief John Drake told NBC News’ Lester Holt that police “feel that” Hale “identifies as trans, but we’re still in the initial investigation into all of that and if it actually played a role into this incident.”
Drake did not say why police believe Hale was transgender. As of Thursday afternoon, six people who knew Hale told NBC News that Hale did not directly come out to them as trans or talk about gender identity. It is not uncommon, however, for trans people to come out to only certain people in their lives — or not come out at all.
Since the shooting, advocates in the LGBTQ community said there has been a flood of threats of violence and people are now afraid to leave their homes. Organizers postponed the march and some advocates planned a smaller “evening of healing” for people to meet safely.
Attendees gathered at small tables, putting arms around one another and ate dinner together. At the meeting, which was not public but an NBC News reporter was invited to attend, some of the participants took comfort in music and poetry readings, some chose to sit in quiet contemplation, and others sat to discuss everything they had been feeling.
“Nashville collectively is grieving the loss of these six people, the three children and three adults,” said Robles, who was a part of the LGBTQ clergy members who helped plan the event. “And then it’s also been difficult to feel like we somehow have to grieve behind closed doors.”
Robles said the angry and violent rhetoric that has escalated against the transgender and wider LGBTQ community since Monday has been “deeply, deeply worrisome for me.”
More on the Nashville shooting
People are “feeling devastated. They’re also feeling a lot of despair and a lot of emotions are high,” they said. “Folks are feeling emotionally exhausted. Folks are feeling physically exhausted.”
Roberto Che Espinoza, a transgender activist who helped organize the event and uses he/they pronouns, said they received many messages from members of the queer and trans community ahead of the march sharing threats of violence.
“I was afraid for my own life,” Espinoza, who was supposed to be one of the speakers at the march, said.
“People are paralyzed in their fear,” they said. “We’re all suffering silently.”
After the march was postponed, Espinoza said the smaller event on Saturday, “is an opportunity to come together, to share a meal, to hear some music, to hear some poetry, to receive some encouragement.”
The march had been planned in response to a bill that will criminalize some drag performances. The first-of-its-kind legislation will ban “adult cabaret entertainment” on public property or in locations where it can be viewed by minors.
“Many folks in the Nashville community were really very disturbed about the drag ban because this is people’s livelihood,” said Rev. Dawn Bennett. “It was so that we could celebrate we could come alongside our drag family in solidarity, show support.”
The law was set to take effect on Saturday, but a federal judge in Tennessee temporarily halted the state law, hours before it was set to take effect.
Judge Thomas Parker cited constitutional protections of freedom of speech in issuing a temporary restraining order.
One of the bill’s Republican lead sponsors, Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, said when it passed that the measure “gives confidence to parents that they can take their kids to a public or private show and will not be blindsided by a sexualized performance.”
Under the law, a first offense is a misdemeanor and a second is a felony.
Bennett said while there has always been discrimination against the LGBTQ community in the state, this week “it got crazier and crazier.”
Bennett said she has church members who told her they “have been physically assaulted just because of who they are this week.”
“Hostility is pervasive right now. Right panic and terror are pervasive right now,” she said.
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