The homophobes in our midst. DiManno,
A homophobic who hung around the gay nightclub he would later spray with gunfire, murdering half a hundred innocents.
Was Omar Mateen casing the joint, in his previous visits, as regulars of Pulse insist they’d seen him on the premises before his homophobic rampage in the early Sunday morning hours? Filling his damning eyes with the sight of men loving men, and women loving women, and everyone else just having fun in a cheery environment; nurturing his malevolence?
Or, as with those who condemn in others the very thing they hate about themselves, was Mateen a closeted homosexual living a lie, like those odious Bible-thumpers caught trolling for furtive gay sex in public washrooms and parks after dark?
Motivation matters, after the fact. But not as much as many would claim as they strive to pull out the strands of the mass killing in Orlando that best serve their own agenda: America’s gun scourge, demonizing of Muslims, homegrown terrorism, imported radicalization, the divide-and-sunder of polarizing politics in a bitterly rhetorical election year.
These victims were mostly gay and, in considerable numbers, Latino. Which hasn’t stopped the execrable Donald Trump from beating his own drum shamelessly, whistling past his own repugnant sewage tank of anti-Hispanic bombast.
We are learning more details about the shooter, none of them good: Wife-beater, Islamist terror cheerleader, hate-monger, New Yorkborn son of an Afghan father who sounds — and appears, on his Facebook page — exceedingly unhinged himself. Amid the shock and grief, as families of the victims were still identifying their kin, forlornly hoping that evil had somehow sidestepped their loved ones, Seddique Mir Mateen said the exact wrong thing, rebuking his son only mildly: “God will punish those involved in homosexuality.” Not “for the servants of God,” he added, to take judgment into their own hands.
Repellent though his words may have been, the father clarified the loathing at the core of the worst domestic-wrought massacre on American soil in modern times.
Even in the liberal West, there are far too many who subscribe to Omar Mateen’s vilifying of gays. Even in 2016, it’s not all rainbow flags and Gay Pride parades. We’ve seen the old bigotry bubble to the surface most recently in the fear-pitching opposition to gender-neutral public bathrooms and change rooms as the revulsion now fixates on transgender civil rights.
What Seddique Mir Mateen professes so blandly, what his son substantiated in the worst possible way imaginable, can be heard from Christian pulpits and in Muslim mosques any day of the week.
But this killer was Muslim and the doctrine he embraced cannot be given a pass out of a reluctance to provoke.
There are 10 countries worldwide where homosexuality is punishable by death. Eight of them are overwhelmingly Muslim.
There are 77 countries where homosexuality remains illegal, most of them in Asia and Africa, where Islam and fundamentalist Christianity are religiously paramount.
Millions of gays, bisexuals and transsexuals are denied their essential sexual dignity, fearing for their lives and their liberty under rigid anti-gay laws. Because the world is not just Europe and the Americas.
They’re beheaded, stoned, flung from rooftops.
In some countries where homosexuality does not formally carry a death penalty, Sharia law nevertheless gives judges and avenging militant groups such as Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, the moral imperative to execute. The same sharia law that almost got a foothold in Ontario a few years back, advocated for family law application as a benign conflict resolution process. Promoted, particularly, by an ultraactivist and brain-addled faction of the left.
It should not be forgotten that anti-sodomy laws were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court only in 2003, though they remain on the books in 13 states, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association in a survey published this month.
Sunday morning at Pulse was the worst, ugliest episode of violence directed against gays anywhere in the world, in one brutal assault, but the discrimination in its myriad forms remains all too prevalent. A report on discrimination and violence against LGBTQ people by the UN Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights noted “hundreds of people have been killed and thousands more injured in brutal, violent attacks,” in all parts of the world. “Other documented violations include torture, arbitrary detention, denial of rights to assembly and expression, and discrimination in health care, education, employment and housing.”
Mere hours after the Pulse rampage, Texas Lt.-Gov. Dan Patrick tweeted this: “Don’t be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” He subsequently deleted it. A British preacher recently spoke out against homosexuality at a mosque in Florida. Three years earlier, he gave a sermon at the University of Michigan, as reported by the Telegraph, in which he claimed that execution of homosexuals was permissible under certain tenets of Islamic religious codes. If a gay person has intercourse in public and more than four people witnessed it, then “death is the sentence.” Adding: “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about this. Death is the sentence.”
It does no good — is profoundly specious — to pretend that homophobia and Islamic extremism were not toxically yoked in what unfolded in Orlando, though the U.S. president would not string all those words together. We don’t need to be reminded, in a condescending manner, that most Muslims are lawabiding and abhor the violence that’s become attached to their faith. But that’s not-of-mind right now; shouldn’t be.
On a planet reeling under the social and economic pressures of mass migration and displacement caused by radical Islamic groups in Central Asia and the Horn of Africa, five million foreigners were granted citizenship in the EU in the last six years. More than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015, compared to 280,000 the year before.
Most are seeking lives of peace and a better future for their children. But some clearly bring their prejudices and religious dogma with them — or their offspring adopt rigid beliefs out of a sense of exclusion and grievance and perceived persecution and outrage over Western-led wars in Muslim nations. They’ve harassed and assaulted women. They are soft targets for terrorist procurement.
Stepping delicately around these realities, refusing to speak truth to malice out of misplaced cultural prudence, affords fertile soil for the fringe exploiters of anxiety and alarm.
And a bigoted piece of offal like Trump can become president of the United States.