Dear America,
I am not happy with you right now. Your political structure is currently doing its best to pander to my needs with political promises that are frankly hollow. You are bickering like children over gun control. You are fighting about calling out radical Islam and whether they are the real enemy in the wake of the Orlando shooting. Some of you are calling for stricter immigration policies. Some of you are saying that the reason the perpetrator was even involved in this is because the collective "we" of America let his parents into the country in the 1980s. Some of you are bragging about how right you were about this sort of thing happening because we let Muslims into the country in the first place. Obviously the collective "some" is a reference to Donald Trump, but there are stirrings like this from people all over the nation.
He just happens to be the most vocal.
Watch the video. It sickens me.
Yes, this was a tragedy. Yes, innocent lives were needlessly taken by a terrible individual. Yes, I am personally saddened by what happened, but I am furious by the response.
In the wake of this shooting, we lost sight of one very important thing — the people who were killed were all members of the LGBTQ community. Now you might say, "But Nathan, that doesn't matter. What matters is that they were Americans!"
I want you all to get one thing very clear.
This country does not care about the LGBTQ community, and that is because you will not openly admit in the media that these victims were members of that community. They were targeted because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. LGBTQ people aren't given the same level of respect, freedom or rights as the heterosexual majority of this country.
Until the recent Obergefell v. Hodges case, LGBTQ people could not marry in most states, could not adopt children, transgender people could not serve in the military, and there is still a restriction on blood and tissue donation. There is still the social stigma placed upon the LGBTQ community by conservative religious types. Many who seek religious guidance are either turned away or openly oppressed by churches. There are still sodomy laws in 17 states that have disregarded the Supreme Court decision of Lawrence v. Texas.
People applauded Kim Davis for denying marriage contracts to same-sex couples.
There is a real hypocrisy about the sanctity of marriage coming from a woman who's had, three husbands.
My point is that the LGBTQ community is continuously marginalized and pushed to the side because it doesn't conform to the same heteronormative agenda as the rest of the country. Now the community is being swept under the rug after the Orlando shooting. Let's get one thing clear about this incident — this was a hate crime. This attack was perpetrated directly against the LGBTQ community. The focus was not to fight a jihadist war against America, and it certainly was not committed by ISIS. It's about time that we focus on what really happened. Forty-nine LGBTQ people were gunned down by a homophobe with a gun.
Speaking of guns, I recently deleted a bunch of "friends" from Facebook. These people were among my more conservative friends. I normally enjoy a healthy discourse with people of vastly different views than my own. It allows for interesting conversations and a better understanding of how people experience life. My reason for this was because, in the shadow of this tragedy, the one thing that these people could focus on was that their guns would be taken away from them.
There is no way that Big Bad Obama is going to swoop in and take your precious weapons away. On the other hand, I do believe that there should be some restrictions set on who can get access to a gun and what guns should be allowed to be bought and sold. The thought that some people have is that by arming the public, there is a greater chance that they will be able to stop an active shooter. With the people who have extensive police and military training, this may be true, but most people who buy guns do not have that kind of training.
For most people when that happens, their response is going to be to freeze up or run. I'm not calling anyone a coward, but it is just a natural instinct that extensive training tries to weed out.
In the end, I had to get rid of these negative people. Right now we need to be focused on coming together and trying to build bridges with each other. We need to realize that some politicians are focused on the LGBTQ community because of the recent events. We need to realize that the LGBTQ community is made up of people who just want to be treated with the same respect and freedom that heterosexual community is granted.
We need to unify together with love and not let this become an issue to divide us. Together we can overcome this tragedy and begin to heal together.
Lastly we need to see that this is a tragic event, and we should mourn the loss of the innocent lives taken from us.
