Violence is No Stranger to the LGBT Community: David Mixner

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

From “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats

Not since June 24, 1973 when a madman fire-bombed the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans has the LGBT community suffered such slaughter at the hands of hate. On that horrible day, 43 years ago, 32 of our own were burned to death. No one was ever charged or punished for that crime. Ever since, unfortunately, random violence has shadowed our journey to freedom. Over a dozen MCC churches have been burned to the ground. Every one of us knows someone who has been gay-bashed. Many have been beaten so badly that they never regain their ability to function in the world. None of us will ever forget Matthew Shepard crucified on a fence in the barren and desolate prairie of Wyoming.

For the LGBT community, the news that terrorists aim to kill us is certainly not new. We have recoiled time and time again as videos show our brothers and sisters in the Middle East stoned to death or hurled off the tops of buildings. In Africa we see members of our community burned to death encased in the infamous ‘neckless’ (a burning tire around their neck). A generation of us witnessed first hand as our brothers endured a prolonged and brutal death from AIDS while our own government turned its back on us. American preachers have called for the death sentence for LGBT Americans and dispatched missionaries overseas to urge third world nations to inflict hate and violence on their own LGBT citizens.

For the most part we have suffered all this amid the silence of others; it has almost become a way of life for us. The lack of outrage or even coverage of the repression and terror directed toward us from the media is striking. Also, the fact that thirteen nations have the death penalty simply for being homosexual — and many of them are American allies. As ACT UP said so eloquently, silence really does equal death.

Now another place, another name has joined the long list: Pulse. Ironically the name of the Orlando bar is the means to ascertain if a person is still alive.

Oh yes, we are still alive. They have not invented a bullet, a gun or firebomb that can come close to murdering our spirit or our determination to be free. For every one of our fallen there are ten to take their place.

The slaughterhouse in Orlando hits close to home. I have spoken there at a community event. Every city in America has a bar like Pulse. We have all danced to the same music! We all know it can happen anywhere, anytime in our community. We are all always at risk.

President Obama rightly called the slaughter in Orlando both a terrorist act and a hate crime. The two can’t be separated.

Let’s be honest. Not only was this twisted terrorist inspired by ISIS; he had plenty of permission here in America to hate us.

There are precincts of American politics filled with rhetoric against our community, our rights, our very being. Pastors advocate hate from their pulpits and legislation is submitted and enacted to demean us and sanction anti-LGBT discrimination. There are states passing laws to permit our fellow citizens to deny us a meal in a restaurant, a place to sleep at night, or even access to a restroom. Do these agents of bigotry really believe their cynical fear-mongering and attempts to write hate into the stature books did not contribute to the massacre at Pulse? Really?

What can we do in the face of such horror?

For years to come and without question we will have to continue fighting our oppressors in the streets and at the ballot box. We cannot rest until every hate-filled law is overturned. The best memorial to the dead of Orlando is a new birth of freedom.

In the short term, many of the killed or injured are poor and they and their families need our financial assistance. Equality Florida has established a “Go Fund Me” page for us to help pay for funerals and medical expenses.

The LGBT community in Texas — and all decent citizens –have a special obligation and that is to remove Lt. Governor Patrick from office for his hateful tweet: “You reap what you sow.” He dishonors his office and America.

The Republican Party must stop exploiting gay-baiting as a tool to turn out their base.

Finally, we must stand tall, proud and open. All of us are sickened and angered by the mass execution of our brothers and sisters, but we are not bowed and not defeated. Never!

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Pope Francis Condemns Orlando Shooting

Pope Francis released a statement through the Vatican press office regarding the overnight shooting in Orlando which took the lives of 50 people and injured at least 53 more.

The terrible massacre that has taken place in Orlando, with its dreadfully high number of innocent victims, has caused in Pope Francis, and in all of us, the deepest feelings of horror and condemnation, of pain and turmoil before this new manifestation of homicidal folly and senseless hatred. Pope Francis joins the families of the victims and all of the injured in prayer and in compassion. Sharing in their indescribable suffering he entrusts them to the Lord so they may find comfort. We all hope that ways may be found, as soon as possible, to effectively identify and contrast the causes of such terrible and absurd violence which so deeply upsets the desire for peace of the American people and of the whole of humanity.

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Silence Equals Death: Why We Need to ‘Come Out’ as Gun Control Advocates

An AR-15 was used in the Orlando attack, the same kind of assault rifle used in the Newtown massacre.

Republicans and other conservative politicians have responded to the tragic shooting in Orlando in two ways: one is a platitude, the other is the reason we have such a hard time doing anything about guns in America.

As if programmed by some algorithm, Republicans, and many other public figures, took to Twitter this morning to send their “thoughts and prayers” to the victims of the shooting. Such platitudes are frustrating, especially when they come from hypocrites who vote against reasonable gun limitations.

As Igor Volsky, Deputy Director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, has shown on his masterful Twitter account, almost every Republican politician (and some Democrats) is in the pocket of the National Rifle Association. Senator Tom Cotton, for example, has received more than $2.5 million in NRA expenditures. So it is no wonder that he and all of his Republican colleagues (plus Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)) voted against prohibiting anyone on terror watch lists from buying guns. We cannot know if a law like that would have prevented the horror in Orlando; it would have certainly prevented the shooter from buying the gun he used. But we do know one thing: the harder we make it to access guns, there fewer mass gun deaths there will be.

Their second response is far more troubling, if equally blood-boiling. They do it after every mass shooting. We are told not to politicize the tragedy. Grover Norquist, anti-tax crusader and NRA board member, said it after Sandy Hook. Multiple-also-ran Carly Fiorina said it after San Bernardino. The NRA not only said it after Aurora; the organization also send out a fundraising solicitation!

There are structural, political, and historical reasons why passing gun control legislation is so hard. The list is long: gerrymandering after the 2010 midterm elections that diminished progressive clout and made Republicans more likely to be challenged from the right than the left, lies and misdirection from the right that gun legislation wants to “take away” all guns, money and politics, ghosts of the 1994 midterm elections after Democrats banned assault weapons and then lost Congress, and weakness among our politicians, among so many other factors. It also has a little bit to with law, and the way legal decisions permeate our collective psyche. And, of course, it has to do with how few of us actually vote.

But the common refrain that anyone trying to do something about gun violence is “politicizing” tragedy is, in many ways, the ultimate culprit. It shuts off the debate before it can get started. If we as a nation are not having a conversation about guns, then there is no fight to win or lose. Silence allows the status quo to remain and and gives entrenched right wing politicians permission to pursue their agenda without risk.

Conservatives adopted the same strategy to quash LGBT equality: preempt the debate about gay equality by erasing them from society. And it worked for decades. For years, it was illegal to send anything through the mail that mentioned gays, same-sex relationships, or homosexuality. It was considered “obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy.” States also criminalized sodomy, forcing us into hiding. Laws, many of which still exist, that allow employers to fire us simply for being gay also force us into the closet. LGBT non-discrimination ordinances have, since the first local one was introduced in the 1970s, been branded by conservatives as licenses to fill young minds with hedonism, sex, and immorality. Better, they said, that gays did not exist in the public’s mind.

If gays were pushed to the margins, few people would care what happened to them. In the 1950s and 1960s, gays were routinely subjected to police raids, entrapment, physical violence, sexual assault, discrimination in employment and housing. Few, if any, laws prohibited it. Federal, state, and local governments didn’t care when AIDS decimated the gay population. Nor did it matter to most people that anti-sodomy laws transmogrified all gays into presumptive criminals.

Something had to be done. The first step: coming out.

Coming out, or publicly identifying as gay, pushed back against society’s attempt to erase us. The slogan, “We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used to It,” may sound trite to us today–we are, after all, everywhere–but it was a brave, revolutionary step without which future success would not have been possible. As the campaign for the freedom to marry taught us, people were more likely to support marriage equality if they know a gay person and have talked with them. That made our public identification as gay or lesbian essential to securing our rights. It allowed us, from dinner tables in Maine, to PTA meetings in California, to have a conversation about equality. And it made the fight fair.

We need to start a conversation about guns in America. It isn’t happening for many reasons. One reason is because we cower when conservatives accuse us of politicizing tragedy and misstate our positions. Instead, we need to “come out” as proud advocates of limiting access to guns, get involved with advocacy organizations pushing reasonable legislation, and vote out Republicans from office en masse. People need to know: We’re here, we’re dying, and we’re not going to take it anymore.

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Could Orlando Tragedy Change Minds on LGBT Equality?

Some politicians with antigay records appear genuinely moved.

www.advocate.com/politics/2016/6/12/could-orlando-tragedy-change-minds-lgbt-equality

President Obama: 'This Was an Act of Terror, and an Act of Hate'

The investigation is ongoing, but Obama is already sure of a few things.

www.advocate.com/crime/2016/6/12/president-obama-was-act-terror-and-act-hate

President Obama Declares We Must “Love One Another” In Face of “Terror and Hate”

The president described Pulse as not just a nightclub but a symbol as “a place of solidarity and empowerment” for the LGBT community.

“This is a sobering reminder that attacks on any American, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country,” Obama said.

Related: The Father Of Orlando Shooter Says Sons Attack Linked To Seeing Two Men Kiss

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