The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote that Walsh's commentary, as well as that of other right-wing commentators, have caused an increase of anti-LGBT violence and sentiment in the United States. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described Walsh as one of the "peddlers of fear and disinformation about LGBTQ people" in the wake of the Club Q mass shooting in November 2022. Walsh had previously said opposing all-age drag events was like fighting cancer, and "just like cancer, stopping it is not a gentle or a painless process". Following the shooting, Walsh lambasted critics of his rhetoric as "soulless demons" and "evil to the core", accusing them of using the shooting to "blackmail us into accepting the castration and sexualization of children". He also rhetorically asked those on the left who felt that "the drag queen-child combination" would lead to "violent backlash" from right-wingers, "if it's causing this much chaos and violence, why do you insist on continuing to do it?" Jeet Heer from The Nation described Walsh's comments, along with those of a few other right-wing figures, as "implicitly a threat. The right is trying to create a new lynching culture, with LGBTQ people as the target."
