“These victims are not just names, they are who I was and who I am. They are my friends that I go dancing with and cry with and stand in solidarity with.”
My dear friend and coworker Michele Mathis said these words in a longer Facebook post Monday, and she couldn’t be more right.
LGBTQ+ community members across the country are mourning the loss of people they may never have known, but at the same time know all too well.
In the 100 plus victims of injury, some losing their lives, people like Michele are seeing themselves, friends, loved ones and partners.
They are seeing their past, present and future experiences as part of a community that lives in fear of what hate-filled people are capable of.
Can we all put our political agendas aside for one moment and recognize that we lost 49 beautiful souls this weekend, and one clearly troubled soul.
This is not about shaming Christians for praying for massacre. This is not about shaming gun owners or wanting to change gun policy. And this is not about radical Islam and ridding our country of what some see as the threat they may pose.
I do want to quickly touch base on the religious aspect of this incident, as it does pertain to the victims.
As a Catholic who is relatively strong in faith, one of the things I have constantly struggled with is the notion that homosexuality is wrong. I’ve never held the belief myself, but I know plenty of amazing, loving people who have, and they are children of God.
I want to put to rest this issue of people saying Christians are saying God killed those people in Orlando because of their sins.
God did not kill the victims of this shooting. God loved each and every one of them. Just as God loves me.
I am a sinner. Everyone is a sinner. My sins may be different than others but they are not any more or less wrong.
So while I struggled with seeing homosexuality as a sin at the time, for argument’s sake let’s say it is-it doesn’t matter. God loved the victims.
The distraught man who murdered them was the one lacking godliness and lacking the loving message God aims to portray.
While I am an avid gun rights supporter, I don’t want to spend this time talking about why this man does not represent all gun owners, just like he does not represent all Muslims.
This man committed a hate crime by murdering 49 LGBTQ+ community members, wounding 53 other members and ultimately affecting all of their friends and family and especially those living in solidarity as LGBTQ community members who resonate with their stories.
Aside from the occasional concern about all the church shootings, and having a very strong Catholic faith, I understand that I do not know and cannot know what it is like to fear for my life because of the very nature of who I am.
I cannot know how it feels to be the surviving customers of Pulse, the night club where the shooting took place, nor can I understand what it feels like to be Michele or other resonating members of the LGBTQ community, but I can recognize that this tragedy affects a wide range of people. Most of all I can recognize this massacre was undeserved and these victims deserve to have their lives recognized and mourned, apart from the political backlash of several different issues on both sides of the spectrum.
While I haven’t seen it mentioned yet as part of a political argument in the unfortunate circumstances, and it may be a stretch, the shooter Omar Mateen, had a criminal justice background, and I’m sure something will arise of police brutality as most of the victims were of color.
In all honestly, I doubt Mateen had any goal of shooting racial minorities when he entered the club that night. It’s clear his sights were set on another minority, and his goal was to kill as many as possible by entering a place full of targets.
The moral of the story is, America has become a place full of fear for everyone, especially discriminated groups, and with an incident like this, it’s impossible to point fingers at a certain group as the problem when we should be focusing on grieving the losses of victims. Only one man is to blame for this event.
The appropriate time for political movements will come, but if the result of this tragedy should put any political activism in motion, it should be toward LGBTQ rights. Though I’m still not sure if I think this is the time to act when we should be mourning.
Forget police brutality, radical Islam and gun rights. This is about people. This is about lost lives. This is about those living in fear as they stand in solidarity with those victims of a hateful, troubled man who doesn’t know God from a stick in the mud.
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