On the subject of Orlando

Saturday, June 18, 2016
I had to take a break from social media last week, and gave my RSS feed only the most cursory of scans. 

In the aftermath of the mass shooting at the nightclub Pulse in Orlando, the rhetoric was just too much for me. Every screed, every wild bit of speculation, every insensitive, hateful, homophobic, racist, bigoted, ammosexual comment was like a small cut on my skin. After only one day of this spew, I felt like someone had put me in a blender for a quick toss with the milling blade.

Events like this always affect me in this way to a greater or lessor extent, but this one...this one was exceptionally bad, because I have an intimate tie to the LGBT community. I know the pain the families of those victims are feeling. I know the crushing grief the parents of the dead are under today, and every day, for the rest of their lives. I grieve with them, and for them.

And I grieve with the larger community, too. I'm sorry your community was targeted. I'm sorry there are those in the world who are so hateful, so confused, so full of rage that they reach a place where they honestly believe members of the LGBT community have no right to exist in the world. I would take away this prejudice, this hate, this bigotry, if I could. I would protect you from this evil, and shield you from the consequences of their hate. But I can't, and that makes me grieve all the more.

But I can refuse to have it in my life.

If you believe the victims of this violence "deserved it" because they were gay, because they chose to go unarmed in a purportedly civilized society, because the U.S. is slowly moving toward equal rights for the LGBT community and deserves to be punished, because your Deity hates homosexuals and wants them to die, because people "not like me" don't deserve the same chances, the same rights, the same safety as you...then get off my world. Family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, politicians, I don't care who you are. Get off.

Get the fuck off my world. And don't come back.


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