They Hate

He was an American. He was a Muslim. He may very well have adhered to radical Islam, but make no mistake–he specifically targeted the LGBT community.

As much as this is an act of domestic terrorism, this is a hate crime. How are they different? Don’t you only try to terrorize people that you hate? I am not really sure, but there is one thing I know. The media will be spending the next days and weeks screaming at the top of their lungs about his religion, immigrants, and terrorism, and the phrase “radicalized Islamic fundamentalists” will be tossed out like life-preservers to the drowning. People will scream that guns don’t kill people; terrorists do, despite the fact that the one common denominator in almost all the mass killings in this country is the easy access to guns, even by guys on the terrorist watch list.

But that will only be half the story. The other half is the half that will get lost in the shuffle. Or rather I should say buried in the shuffle since it will absolutely be intentional.

This is a crime that could have been perpetuated by another religion that we are all much more familiar with, one that has a radical wing that ALSO specifically targets gay people. It wasn’t, but would you have been surprised? I can’t believe anyone would have been shocked if this had turned out to be a Dylan Roof or a Robert Dear style shooting. You know, the white Christian guys who have been radicalized by the far-right fringe of the far-right wing of American politics. Why, within hours the media was reporting about a man in Santa Monica, California who was heavily armed with weapons, ammunition and ingredients for a pipe bomb, heading towards the pride parade. He also wanted to shoot up the LGBT community. Only difference? He isn’t a Muslim and he got caught.

When you attempt to de-humanize an entire segment of the population, when you try to legalize discrimination against them, when the leaders that YOU elect to office think all of this behavior is acceptable because of their version of “religion,” you breed only one thing. HATE. And you have no control over who you breed it in or what they choose to do with it.

Think that now I am the one being extreme? This country is currently in the throes of a “movement” dedicated to legalizing discrimination against LGBT people and they are doing it disguised as “religious freedom.” Politicians including Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Michelle Bachman, Ted Cruz, shit, I don’t have room to name them all, have said horribly offensive things about the LGBT community, likening them to child abusers, child molesters, comparing being gay to bestiality and incest. All were serious contenders for President of the United States at one point, and they are just the tip of the iceberg. Jerry Falwell, Franklin Graham, and Pat Robertson are every bit as awful, if not worse.

So what is a good and decent right-wing Christian supposed to think? They hate Muslims, but they also hate the LGBT community and their “gay agenda” that is “destroying America.” And within this lies the biggest problem of all.

They hate.

Brought to fruition through one man in Orlando, Florida, are all of their fears and their fear-mongering rhetoric rolled into one conflicting, inconvenient, unexpected package. Anyone and everyone who perpetuated hate against the LGBT community, who voted for those who do, who has supported the hate with their silence, and preached the hate from their pulpits, has blood on their hands today. The blood of 53 men and women killed by one man who listened to all the wrong people and who absorbed all the wrong messages.

One man who hated the LGBT’s in the name of God.

The LGBT community will recover. They have no choice, literally. About who they are, who they were born as, who God created them to be. They are accustomed to being targets of violence and rhetoric, watching their backs day in and day out, every time they leave the house and venture somewhere new, every time they turn on the TV and another preacher or politician is spewing a hate-filled rant about marriage equality or Target’s bathrooms. But we owe them more. We owe it to them to be better.

As for me? I am also a Christian and when I stand alone, before the throne of God at the end of my days, I will be able to hold my head high and say that while I am certain that I have erred in my life, I erred on the side of love every time, and I am not sorry about that.