Do you honestly think you could walk into a gay nightclub and feel fear? Of what? Not that you’ll be killed. A gay nightclub is where you go if you have no interest at all in being killed. A sanctuary of music, style, snappy conversation. If you’re afraid someone of your sex will ask you to dance or buy you a Mojito, you probably wouldn’t be there in the first place.
A sports bar is based on the same idea, just different people who prefer buffalo wings while watching helmeted professionals trying to break each others’ spirit. It’s all entertainment, the choices are varied, and lots of people are comfortable enough with themselves to go either place.
But this massacre in Orlando was an answer without a question. A lone gunmen who really didn’t have connections with authentic terrorists, he just said he did. He made it easy for them to say, “Oh yeah, he’s one of us,” when he probably wasn’t even Facebook pals with any terrorists. Omar Mateen was a human tragedy walking around in jeans and an NYPD t-shirt, beating his wife and teaching his son.
Where does this energy come from, this urge to destroy? We know we are all energy wrapped in these funny little elastic suits we call skin. We know some people have the invisible energy we are attracted to and some have the kind we avoid. Energy is one of the easiest things in the world to change. And it’s free. But why do it? Doesn’t it make more sense to spend lots of money on guns and bullets, do hours of wasteful practice, disturb the peace, and get so bored with paper targets that we graduate to moving ones?
Oh please. If that’s the most entertaining thing we can come up with we’ve not tried Las Vegas.
Did these murders in Orlando have to do with gay? Latin? Florida? America? None of it. All of it.
Omar Mateen was a man who, according to his father, thought it was horrible for his young son to witness two men kissing each other. Now, we’re just guessing here, but we think a young boy would be just fine with seeing, or feeling, anything good. He is young! Three? Don’t you think that boy would delight in seeing horses swish their tails, people laughing and kissing, butterflies landing on his nose? Three years old! Innocent, curious, and not at all disturbed by anything until it bites or stings. Kids seem to do just fine finding out what’s real.
But when intolerant attitudes get ahold of children’s outlooks, and make sure children know that hating and fear bring in more admiration than religion ever thought of, well, there’s a problem.
And now? Now this kid gets to grow up knowing his father, instead of showing him the wonders of the world, decided to annihilate happy people who were living as he would not allow himself to live. Now this three-year-old has an impossible legacy to carry. Forever.
And that lies squarely on the doormat of religion. Whoever came up with the insane idea that a person in vapor form planted us here to worship him doesn’t know much about love. Hey, we’re not blaming killing on religion. Or are we? Seems like there’s an awful lot of Christian vs. Muslim interpretation going on. There are peaceful religions, of course, but the depth isn’t in interpreting what a man, any man, said about how to live. The depth is in believing that we are essentially here to appreciate life, not destroy it.
We believe there is no reasonable argument that any individual own an assault rifle, but we all know people who do even if we don’t know we know. Feel safer?
Reading through our Constables on Patrol this week, nine of the 43 calls to police in Eureka Springs involved violence. Socking, shouting, throwing chairs, breaking other people’s stuff, diminishing people and generally being humorless.
Now, we can blame violence on tequila. Too much free time. Chemtrails. And nothing we blame really has anything to do with it.
Blame the devil.
Mary Pat Boian