What can I say about the “deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history” at an Orlando gay bar yesterday? How can I say it? For some number of my friends, as well as classmates from high school to divinity school, I am the only openly LGBTQ person they know. Others know me as, perhaps, the most outspoken activist they’ve ever met. Either way, silence is not an option.
I learned of the shooting during the “joys and sorrows” portion of my Unitarian Universalist church’s Sunday service. During social hour a straight ally shared her heartbreak at the news and how it contrasted with her experience of marching in St. Pete’s pride parade last year, “when no one thought a thing about the possibility of it being dangerous.” “No so,” I countered. I wasn’t in St. Pete last year but I can say without hesitation LGBTQ people there and everywhere understood the very real danger of attack even as – and in part because – we celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court’s validation of marriage equality.
Which version of events or explanations each of us chooses to believe means everything as we try to make sense of someone walking into a bar and opening fire on hundreds of people he didn’t know with the intent of killing as many of them as possible. I don’t accept either easy answer, that Omar Mataan was an isolated example of anti-gay bigotry taken to its logical extreme or that he was part of a vast ISIL-fueled attack on America. We’ll never know “the truth” about Bloody Sunday in Orlando.
A truth is that this horrific experience will forever scar the hearts of the family and friends of all who died, including Omar Mataan’s. I didn’t cry about the massacre in Orlando until I heard Lin-Manuel Miranda’s response in accepting a Tony award for the play, Hamilton (http://www.nytimes.com/…/10…/lin-manuel-mirandas-sonnet.html):
“When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day. …history remembers. We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger, we rise and fall and light from dying embers remembrances that hope and love last longer.
"Love is love is love is love is love is love is love — cannot be killed or swept aside. …Now fill the world with music, love and pride.”
I can do that. I must do that to honor those who have been lost to hate and fear, not only my LGBTQ brothers and sisters but all who have suffered because “sometimes hate and fear seem stronger.” Love is love is love is love is love is love is love, and I refuse to let it die.
I learned of the shooting during the “joys and sorrows” portion of my Unitarian Universalist church’s Sunday service. During social hour a straight ally shared her heartbreak at the news and how it contrasted with her experience of marching in St. Pete’s pride parade last year, “when no one thought a thing about the possibility of it being dangerous.” “No so,” I countered. I wasn’t in St. Pete last year but I can say without hesitation LGBTQ people there and everywhere understood the very real danger of attack even as – and in part because – we celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court’s validation of marriage equality.
Which version of events or explanations each of us chooses to believe means everything as we try to make sense of someone walking into a bar and opening fire on hundreds of people he didn’t know with the intent of killing as many of them as possible. I don’t accept either easy answer, that Omar Mataan was an isolated example of anti-gay bigotry taken to its logical extreme or that he was part of a vast ISIL-fueled attack on America. We’ll never know “the truth” about Bloody Sunday in Orlando.
A truth is that this horrific experience will forever scar the hearts of the family and friends of all who died, including Omar Mataan’s. I didn’t cry about the massacre in Orlando until I heard Lin-Manuel Miranda’s response in accepting a Tony award for the play, Hamilton (http://www.nytimes.com/…/10…/lin-manuel-mirandas-sonnet.html):
“When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day. …history remembers. We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger, we rise and fall and light from dying embers remembrances that hope and love last longer.
"Love is love is love is love is love is love is love — cannot be killed or swept aside. …Now fill the world with music, love and pride.”
I can do that. I must do that to honor those who have been lost to hate and fear, not only my LGBTQ brothers and sisters but all who have suffered because “sometimes hate and fear seem stronger.” Love is love is love is love is love is love is love, and I refuse to let it die.