The Colorado GOP’s (now former) chairman, Dave Williams, was voted out of his seat on August 24th after some intensely homophobic correspondences of his were outed to the public. The vote was clear, with eighty-eight percent of the party’s eligible voting members agreeing to swap him for former El Paso County GOP Chair Eli Bremer.
The reasoning, according to Michael J. Allen (a Republican D.A. out of Colorado Springs), was because Williams’ tenure was creating division within the party, which is ultimately unsustainable in any political atmosphere. Specifically, Williams was using resources allocated for Republican state measures into his own (unfruitful) Congressional designs and harshly going after party members who he didn’t agree with socially or politically.
However, it appears to be no coincidence that this removal comes two months after the Colorado GOP email blast titled ‘God Hates Pride’ — signed by Williams, it referred to members of the LGBTQ+ community as “godless groomers” that want to “harm our children”, and contained intensely homophobic Christian content. A Denver journalist, Kyle Clark, promptly shared a screenshot of the horrifying email on his X account, to which the official X account for the Colorado Republican Party replied, “Burn all the #pride flags this June”. It was reported shortly after this email blast and abrasive X post that one hundred and thirteen Colorado Republican politicians had called via petition for Williams’ removal from his chairman position. This is yet another symbol of progress within the Colorado GOP — a few years ago, a Republican Colorado Senator denounced Trump and many followed him in that.
Williams has many increasingly homophobic thoughts on the matter. For one, he refused to rescind his signature from the email or apologize for signing it in the first place, saying, “We make no apologies for saying God hates pride […] as it’s an agenda that harms children and undermines parental authority, and the only backlash we see is coming from radical Democrats, the fake news media, and weak Republicans who bow down at the feet of leftist cancel culture”, this past June shortly after the email went viral. Additionally, after the vote occurred on the 24th to remove him from his office, he attempted to right things with a fraudulent email blast saying that he had not been voted out, and then once it was confirmed that he was, in fact, being removed, he vowed that he would stay in power and has deemed the election as “illegal”. Unsurprisingly, Williams is also a believer that the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden.
In the past, Williams has shown homophobic inclinations, supporting a bill that attempted to ban same-sex marriage in 2023 and also creating a whole committee in attempt to pass legislation to ban gender-affirming care for minors within the state of Colorado. So, while the email blast and following comments are really nothing new and to be expected, this is still a very scary thing for queer people within Colorado — knowing that, although Williams has been removed from office and that’s a win, people with similar feelings can be in power for long periods of time virtually uncontested is terrifying.
