“I don’t have a problem with gay people, just don’t shove it in my face.”
That’s one of the more common lines trotted out when it comes to the “tolerance” of LGBTI people in our society. It is for this reason that we constantly look over our shoulders when in public and looking to hold the hand or steal a kiss from those we love, and it’s why we seek the sanctuary of safe spaces such as gay clubs in order to be who we are, free of concerns for our safety.
Over the weekend, that safe space was violated. Not only on a Latin night (with many patrons who were people of colour) in the gay nightclub of Pulse in Orlando, Florida, but in safe spaces all over the world. In the worst mass shooting in US history, more than 100 LGBTI people were killed or injured.
The terrorist reportedly said he was disgusted to see two men kiss. Reports are now emerging that he had gone to the nightclub on multiple occasions, and had even used a gay dating app. This was not an attack on everyone. It was homophobic.
The reaction from some to attempt to minimise that violation, or to somehow claim it affects everyone equally, highlights just how difficult it is for some to feel compassion towards gay people, let alone relate to them.
In Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s initial public statement, he did not mention at all that the shooter had targeted a gay club or LGBTI people. Instead, he said it was “an assault on every one of us. It’s an assault on freedom.” It was hours before his second statement explicitly mentioning it was a gay club would correct the record. In that time, I tweeted highlighting the omission and received many replies asking why it mattered or why couldn’t we see it as an attack on all people.
It is, but we should not diminish the impact this has not only on queer people in Orlando but queer people around the world. The shooter didn’t go to a straight bar to shoot straight people for being straight. This was an explicit attack at a gay club on gay people for being gay. To not mention that is disrespectful to those who were murdered.
The Sky News incident — where one guest and the host attempted to “straightsplain” to gay Guardian columnist Owen Jones why his feelings about the attack being homophobic were no different to the pain felt by everyone else — was just infuriating, but it served as the perfect example of how difficult some people have with even relating to the concept of LGBTI people. As Jones wrote after the incident:
“We all grow up in a society that still treats us as if we are inferior: we have all repeatedly encountered homophobic abuse, the stress of coming out repeatedly, or the fear of holding hands with a partner in public. To imagine LGBT people who may have endured distress and internalised prejudice — just because of who they are — spending their last moments in terror as a homophobic terrorist hunted them down is just unbearable.”
As Jones said, this was homophobia as well as terrorism, but some are only keen to see the latter side of things and talk up ties to Islamic State, which remain, at the time of writing, unconfirmed. These are the same people who have spent months railing against a program developed for schools to teach kids how to empathise and relate to someone who might be gay, bisexual or transgender. Attempts to teach people to have empathy with LGBTI people is treated as some attempt to “convert them” as though merely attempting to step into the shoes of a person with a different sexuality to them might result in them catching the gay. In failing to acknowledge the homophobic nature of the attack, they are not forced to confront their own prejudices.
Part of the reluctance to acknowledge the impact on the LGBTI community seems to be an unfortunate byproduct of the marriage equality movement’s attempt to frame LGBTI people as “just like you” and therefore worthy of marriage rights. Yes, we are very much like everyone else, but we are also very different. Perhaps it’s time to show and embrace that difference.
If anything good can come out of this horrific tragedy, it might force LGBTI issues to be shoved in the faces of people who maybe hadn’t considered them before.
“In the worst mass shooting in US history”. Check your history Josh. There is a long list of massacres perpetrated on both native American and black people in the US. For a sense of perspective you might like to read http://www.thesaker.is of 13 June 2016.
Just when you thought the Incredible Shrinking Malcolm Turnbull couldn’t possibly shrink any more, he managed to with his initial public statement on the Orlando shootings. Turnbull was of course obligated to say something, but whoever writes his speeches seems to have been lazy, and merely lifted a few lines from the George W Bush/John W Howard songbook immediately post-911: “hatred of our freedoms”; “free society which all of us enjoy”; “assault on every one of us”; “assault on freedom” etc etc. What risible poppycock! Even Turnbull realised this for within a couple of hours his line changed to the more accurate but otherwise non-informative “act of terror and hate” more in line with Obama’s response. Obama I suppose had a better speech-writer.
There is so much money spent on anti-terrorism that every violent event must be considered to be terrorist – otherwise who would accept the cost and the associated loss of civil liberties?
So Swen, you would prefer less or no money spent on terror related crime so we can save those funds for what purpose? I guess you would also be happy to have more civil liberties (not sure which ones we have lost) at whatever cost in terms of terror attacks.
Given the nature of the article your reply seems totally out of context, if it was not a terror event maybe you can enlighten all of us as to exactly what it was. I doubt very much the attacker had any ties to ISIS or any other group, that does not mean it was anything but a terrorist attack………… Was it an attack YES………… Did it create Terror YES………… Was the attacker motivated by bias or hate……….YES.
Simple really when you think about it.
Yes, it was an attack on a minority by an extremist.
That minority was targeted in large part because that extremist philosophy (radical Islamic fundamentalism) considers homosexuality to be an affront to their god.
The truth though is that gay people are only one target for that extremism, Jews in Paris, Yahzdi’s in Iraq, Christian’s and Coptic’s in much of the Middle East, Australian’s in Bali, and Westerner’s everywhere just on general principles.
In the twisted, hate filled world those people live in, killing gay’s in America ticked multiple boxes.
Homosexuals? Check
Westerners? Check
Americans? Check
On American soil? Check
Yes, they were targeted because they were considered suitable targets in the warped world of the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist.
The rest of the sane world was horrified, it didn’t matter if it had been a church group or a school group or a night club full of straight people, in all of these cases the general population was horrified and rushed to assist.
Look at all those people, straight and gay, who lined up to give blood, the church groups that rushed to provide aid and comfort to the victims, the businesses that opened on a Sunday to provide food and drink to police, rescuers and the thousands of people who lined up to give blood.
Instead of making it all about the sexuality of the victims, chosen as they were in part because of it, try and understand that they were targeted because they were Westerners, on American soil, engaging in activities (dancing, drinking, music, sex) that ISIL and it’s fellow travelers consider abhorrent.
This was an attack on all of us, even though the target this time hit a section of the community, just as similar attacks have hit other sections of the community.
Don’t make it about us (gays) vs them (straights), understand it is about us (the west) vs them (radical Islamic terrorists)
They hate everything about us that separates them from their brutal, dark ages view of the world, they hate modernity and everything that it entails, in this case they hit the gay community, next time it will be some other group.
We need to stand together as one community, lest we fall seperately
isn’t it ironic to “stand together as one community” whilst delineating an “us (the west) vs them (radical Islamic terrorists)”?
Thanks Josh, you’ve put in words what I have been feeling. I was watching Leigh Sales last night talk with a terrorism expert about everything except the gay hate that is at the heart of this tragedy. My partner and I just looked at each other and said at the same time “she’s missed the point completely”. From many others, that wouldn’t be surprising, but from Leigh Sales? Today’s Sydney Morning Herald has several letters denouncing the evils of Islam from letter writers blind to the actual cause – disdain and hatred of homosexuality or the sexually different. They seem completely unaware of the suffering of LGBTI people under any fundamentalist regime, religious or otherwise. The caliphate happily hates, tortures and publicly murders muslim gay men because they are gay. I think the murderer in Orlando just used religion as a cloak to try and justify in some perverse way his loathing and murderous intentions towards LGBTI people because we are who we are. We are outsiders, and I do try and embrace that, but it has its costs.