People must acknowledge their role in a culture where violence against LGBT people exists
I’m worried that by the time my column is published, all of the think pieces will be written, everyone will have moved on and my article will seem dated and, well, boring.
It’s the nature of the modern news cycle — we are outraged by something and then quickly forget about it as soon as the next atrocity occurs.
But I have to write about what happened in Orlando last weekend.
You know the horrifying details — a nightclub, a rain of gunfire, 49 innocent people murdered.
I’m sure your Facebook walls have been flooded with damning indictments of America’s gun laws and, sadly, there’s probably been a few Islamaphobic comments creeping in too. (Unfriend those people immediately.)
No matter how much coverage has already been given to the Orlando shooting, I feel I need to write this article because in ten days time, American gun laws will still need to be reformed.
Religious bigotry will still exist.
In ten days time, homophobia will still be an insidious undercurrent in our society.
Because really, when it comes down to it, the Orlando shooting was an attack on LGBT people, no matter how much the media attempts to dismiss that.
A man walked into a gay nightclub with the full intention of killing gay people. How could that be construed as anything but an assault on the LGBT community?
Most rational people are horrified by the Orlando Shooting and will rightfully condemn it but it’s time for straight people to acknowledge our role in allowing a culture to exist in which something like this could even happen.
Instinctively we go on the defensive, denying that we could somehow be any way at fault. We wouldn’t buy a gun. We wouldn’t murder anyone. This is not our problem.
And yet we continue to allow our children to use the word ‘gay’ as an insult. We say that we have no problem with gay people but why do they have to be so ‘in your face’ with their sexuality? Why do they need a Pride March? Why did they need to get married, couldn’t they have been happy with civil partnerships?
Is it really so difficult to understand that these throwaway comments might be contributing to a mindset that fears homosexuality, that sees it as something so ‘unnatural’ that it should be forbidden?
Is it such a stretch to imagine that the man at the centre of the Orlando Shooting had probably been hearing such comments for most of his life?
He was not born hating gay people. He was taught to do so.
The only gay people I knew growing up were my ballet instructor (whom I thought for ages was having an affair with a friend’s mother) and a hairdresser (whom I thought was just very good friends with another men).
When I moved to Dublin to study English at Trinity, I started going to gay bars with my friends and I was shocked to discover how uncomfortable I felt.
It was so jarring to see two people of the same sex kissing because I had never seen it before; not on TV, not in movies, not in real life. That’s why exposure is so important — the more I went to LGBT spaces, the less ‘shocking’ it became. (I have an arts degree and I worked in fashion. I went to a lot of gay bars.)
One of the most bizarre elements of the Marriage Referendum for me was the obsession with gay sex (newsflash! straight people have anal sex as well) and this depiction of a ‘gay lifestyle’ as something utterly different to what the rest of us are doing, as if gay men and women were hanging off chandeliers while straight people were stuck at home doing their taxes.
Gay people have to do their grocery shopping, they clean their bathrooms, they watch Netflix and hang out with friends and bring their kids to school and go for a quick drink after work and walk their dogs, and, yes, do their taxes.
We’re all equally as boring as each other.
After the devastation of the Orlando shootings, what kept me awake at night was wondering how many times I had heard people say that they ‘didn’t have a problem with the gays’ but only as long as ‘they stuck to their own pubs and clubs’.
I won’t even try to unpack the implications of wanting to ghettoize an entire section of society.
Instead, I’ll ask you to remember that that’s exactly what the people at Pulse nightclub were doing that night. They were in their ‘safe’ space.
Maybe it was the first place where they learned that it was okay to be truly express themselves.
Maybe it was at Pulse nightclub that they learned that love is love, no matter what your gender or the gender of your partner.
On Sunday, June 12, Omar Mateen tried to take that away from them.
He tried to take that away from all LGBT people around the world.
Whenever I argue with homophobic people for being intolerant, they counteract that by telling me that I need to be more tolerant of them.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, apparently, and should respect their right to free speech.
I would like to tell those people that they might be entitled to their opinion but if their opinion is tinged with hatred, with bigotry, with disdain for another human being just because of whom they decide to love; then their opinion is dangerous.
Their opinion is hurting people. Their opinion is causing LGTB teenagers to take their own lives out of desperation and fear. Their opinion is responsible for brutal assaults on gay men and woman. Their opinion is killing innocent people in nightclubs in countries far away from Irish shores. It’s no longer ‘just’ an opinion.
If your ‘opinion’ is causing gay people to take their own lives, or killing innocents in nightclubs, it is no longer just an opinion.
