{"id":4709,"date":"2016-06-15T06:33:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T12:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=4709"},"modified":"2016-06-15T13:42:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-15T19:42:43","slug":"love-is-love-is-love-is-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/06\/love-is-love-is-love-is-hate.html","title":{"rendered":"Love is love is love is . . . hate?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The two emerging narratives coming across my facebook and twitter feeds could not be more different. \u00a0In the one, we need to face up to, and respond to, the fact that ISIS, and Islam in general, are hostile to homosexuality*; the attack at the Pulse nightclub is no different than ISIS attacks in Paris and Brussels. \u00a0In the other, the killer\u2019s religion is immaterial, his anti-gay animus came from the wider (Christian) culture, and the way to stop these attacks is by banning semi-automatic weapons, and, with respect to the wider culture, for Christians to fully embrace sexual minorities.<\/p>\n

Hence, the twitter hashtag \u201clove is love\u201d and the Lin-Manuel Miranda \u201csonnet\u201d<\/a> with the line \u201clove is love is love is love is love is love is love is love.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, I don\u2019t have links. \u00a0Just typing up a few reflections as\u00a0I\u2019m struggling with what to do with this. \u00a0That which should unite us is instead dividing us, as gay-rights activists direct their anger at Christians, and insist that professions of sorrow and sympathy by Christians are invalid unless they embrace gay marriage and welcome pre-op transwomen into the girls\u2019 and women\u2019s locker rooms and sports teams, and bake the cakes and sign the wedding licenses, and take sexual activities off the Sin List.<\/p>\n

And at the same time, there are new narratives emerging. \u00a0The killer had anger issues, or was mentally ill, supposedly, so that his actions are no different than other mass killers. \u00a0He was, we\u2019re told gay, so his act was a sort of self-hate \u2014 though it\u2019s not clear whether his prior visits to the club were because he \u201cbelonged\u201d there or because he was casing out the place.<\/p>\n

One writer at The Federalist<\/a> even rejects the premise that the club was targeted because its patrons were gay, both because he cased out Disney as well and because at no point in his 911 calls did he mention that as a motive.<\/p>\n

To be sure, the nightclub was a soft target if ever there was one: according to an eyewitness account in the New York Times (which I can\u2019t find any longer; here\u2019s a similar account<\/a>), the place was so loud and dark and crowded that he was able to shoot repeatedly before clubgoers fully understood what was going on. The witness describes thinking it was part of the music, or maybe a firecracker, or maybe just a hoax. It\u2019s also easy to imagine that the killer would, due to stereotypes, consider a bar full of gay men as unlikely to fight back. It also seems to me that I read not long ago that drug use is high among gay men \u2014 it\u2019s not reported anywhere, but if the killer figured on the clubgoers being high on drugs and all the more unable to comprehend and fight back, that\u2019d add to his choice of target. \u00a0And it was a small place, with little more than just the dance floor and the restrooms, and no easy way to flee.<\/p>\n

But despite all these\u00a0potential reasons why he\u2019d pick a place like this, it seems unlikely that the gay clientele was not a factor in his choice.<\/p>\n

And, not surprisingly Trump has doubled-down on his call for a moratorium on immigration from terrorist-origin countries, and Obama has doubled down on his insistence that there is no such thing as \u201cradical Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh, and gun control. \u00a0What can I even say here? \u00a0the Left insists that an AR-15 is a military weapon wrongly in the hands of civilians, the Right says that they\u2019re wrong on all accounts; it\u2019s an ordinary hunting rifle. \u00a0The Left further insists that we need an \u201cassault weapons ban\u201d and the Right replies that there\u2019s no such thing as an \u201cassault weapon\u201d and the now-expired legislation banned guns based on cosmetic features that made them look \u201cscary\u201d but didn\u2019t have an effect on their functionality.\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t really know what the solution is. \u00a0Maybe the Right should just shrug and say to the Left, \u201cfine, if it makes you happy to ban scary-looking guns, go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But at the same time, in the Orlando shooting, I\u2019ve read accounts and can\u2019t really piece together exactly how he killed so many so quickly. \u00a0Was it really as simple as \u201cshooting ducks in a barrel\u201d, and the dark, the noise, the crowds, the confusion, and (possibly) the drug use making the clubgoers easy prey? \u00a0I have read statements that there were gun battles, but nothing I\u2019ve seen really gives a good sense of it all. \u00a0Would any sort of gun legislation, other than a total ban or a restriction to single-bullet guns, have made a difference?<\/p>\n

So what next?<\/p>\n

It seems rather likely that this is just the next in a series of attacks. \u00a0Nothing in the way the nation, or our politicians, are responding suggests that we\u2019ll see any actions that will prevent the next attack, or attacks months or years into the future.<\/p>\n

(* UPDATE: \u00a0I put this asterisk there intending to add a parenthetical comment that I forgot about until rereading the post. \u00a0My thought was this: \u00a0it strikes me as odd that \u201chomosexuality\u201d or \u201cgays and lesbians\u201d has been replaced, by those speaking the preferred lingo, as \u201cLGBT people\u201d (or add to the acronym as desired, e.g., LGBTQ, LGBTQIA, etc.) \u00a0After all, a gay man or a lesbian woman is simply different than a transgender person who is different than an intersex person. \u00a0And I would further think\u00a0that an acronym would feel too impersonal for people to be willing to adopt that label as an identity. \u00a0But this is parenthetical.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The two emerging narratives coming across my facebook and twitter feeds could not be more different. \u00a0In the one, we need to face up to, and respond to, the fact that ISIS, and Islam in general, are hostile to homosexuality*; the attack at the Pulse nightclub is no different than ISIS attacks in Paris and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[413,197],"class_list":["post-4709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-orlando","tag-radical-islam"],"yoast_head":"\nLove is love is love is . . . hate?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The two emerging narratives coming across my facebook and twitter feeds could not be more different. \u00a0In the one, we need to face up to, and respond to,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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