'Queer as Folk' Writer Russell T Davies Warns a 'Wave of Anger, Violence' is About to Crash Down on LGBTQ+ People

The TV writer of the original "Queer As Folk" and "It's a Sin," Russell T Davies, warns that LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. and UK alike are about to be engulfed in the results of "weaponiz[ed] hate speech."

The celebrated writer "said gay society is in the 'greatest danger I have ever seen' since the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president in November," UK newspaper the Guardian relayed.

The newspaper interviewed Davies, who was at the Gaydio Pride awards in Manchester, on March 14.

The "Dr. Who" writer told the Guardian, "As a gay man, I feel like a wave of anger, and violence, and resentment is heading towards us on a vast scale."

Insisting he was "not being alarmist," Davies went on to say, "I'm 61 years old. I know gay society very, very well, and I think we're in the greatest danger I have ever seen."

He's speaking from first-hand observation, the writer said. "I've literally seen a difference in the way I'm spoken to as a gay man since that November election, and that's a few months of weaponizing hate speech, and the hate speech creeps into the real world," Davies related.

His warning was echoed in "his keynote speech at the awards ceremony," the newspaper noted, "which rewards the efforts made to improve the lives of LGBTQ+ people in the UK..."

The Guardian relayed that, in his address, Davies "criticiz[ed] Trump" as well as "the president's ally Elon Musk."

"I think times are darkening beyond all measure and beyond anything I have seen in my lifetime," Davies warned from the podium – a sobering assessment, as he recalled the terror of living through the homophobia that was part of the height of the AIDS epidemic.

"The joyous thing about this is that we fought back," Davies reminded his listeners. But times now are different, he said, drawing parallels between real life and the existentialist dangers of the epic fantasy novel "The Lord of the Rings."

"The threat from America, it's like something at The Lord of the Rings. It's like an evil rising in the west, and it is evil," Davies said.

"We've had bad prime ministers and we've had bad presidents before," Davies noted. "What we've never had is a billionaire tech baron openly hating his trans daughter."

With Musk not only using X (formerly Twitter) as his personal megaphone but also acting in the role of a government official as the head of DOGE in the U.S., Western civilization has moved into uncharted territory, Davies said.

"We have never had this in the history of the world," the Guardian quoted Davies saying. "It is terrifying because he and the people like him are in control of the facts, they're in control of information, they're in control of what people think, and that is what we're now facing."

But, as the queer community did four decades ago, we will rise to the times and take on the problems delivered to our door by others, Davies predicted.

"What we will do in Elon Musk's world, that we're heading towards, is what artists have always done," Davies said in his remarks to the newspaper – "to meet in cellars, and plot, and sing, and compose, and paint, and make speeches, and march."

"If we have to be those rebels in basements yet again, which is when art thrives, then that's what we'll become."