I Read the Guardian this Morning and Wept no responses
Apparently Omar Mateen visited the Pulse disco several times before he attended with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and a .233 calibre AR-15 style assault rifle. On the occasions when he visited before, did he dance? Did he have a good time? Did he pick up guys? Did he get rejected? At what point of his life was he radicalised? We need a timeline here. A narrative is hiding in gunsmoke and our fury that this outrage can have happened. With guns bought legally. By a mentally ill (probably) homophobic (certainly) radicalised (definitely) angry obsessively violent terribly dangerous individual.
We know that many of the most homophobic individuals hate gays because they hate the gay in themselves. It’s almost a cliche – the “methinks he doth protest too much” line has so much truth in it. Many homophobes resent the fact that they cannot express their true sexuality for a variety of reasons – family, religion, the opinions of their peers, prejudices injected by generations of ignorance – so much that they spend their lives railing against lgbt people, sometimes physically attacking them. I am writing a novel about this. Let’s face it: a person who is confident about their own sexuality has no reason to criticise others for theirs.
My heart is broken. Not just for those beautiful innocents who had their lives destroyed by this barking madman with his legal guns – but also for the cruel combination of events and genetics that drove this person to his night of madness.
what they know about Mateen: http://qz.com/704952/what-we-know-about-the-orlando-gunman-omar-mateen/