Omar Mateen’s true enemy
A story of self-hatred
Omar Mateen and I have something in common, it turns out. Reports coming from Orlando suggest he was frequently among the clientele of the Pulse nightclub. His phone had on it apps used by men looking for sex with other men. No, I’ve never been to Pulse and I don’t have those apps on my phone, but we’re still somewhat alike in one very important way. At least, I’m inferring that based on what we know.
Unfortunately, the media is saying he may have been gay. I say unfortunately because that’s what they always say when someone who outwardly appears to be straight is suddenly shown to have proclivities that aren’t. Human sexuality is vastly more complicated than the binary straight or gay. Mateen could very well have identified and chosen to live his life as a straight man and still had sex with other men. That’s a thing. Or he could have been a closeted gay man. Or he could have been bisexual. We’ll probably never know, but my point is that because he occasionally seemed to show sexual interest in other men doesn’t mean he was gay.
A person’s sexuality is immutable. Like their eye color or their handedness. I believe science tells us that and my own personal experience informs me of it. There was a time in my life when I wished that wasn’t true. When I wished for something simpler and easier to live with, but try I did, I couldn’t change it. Couldn’t choose it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. I see in Mateen a person similarly struggling with that realization. But unlike me who eventually accepted and embraced myself, Mateen appears to have let it consume him with a hateful rage.
Where does that rage come from? I see no evidence that people are born with a hatred and fear of LGTBQ people. Like racism, it has to be taught. It has to be observed. It has to be programmed into a kid before they can form their own thoughts and feelings (Many times, in a misguided attempt to ensure that kid won’t grow up as gay, trans, or bisexual). This programming is done primarily through and because of religion. In the case of Mateen, that religion was Islam but anyone living in the United States knows Muslims don’t own a monopoly on the demonization of the non-heterosexual. Even this week following the awful carnage in Orlando, fringe Christian pastors have been calling for more killing of LGBTQ people (and even some not so fringe). This past November, Republican presidential candidates shared a stage with a Christian pastor who had earlier in that same event called for gay people to be put to death. None of them called him out for that hate speech.
Until we can find a way to put behind us religiously motivated intolerance and hatred against the LGBTQ among us, just as we have left behind an acceptance of human slavery and an aversion to shellfish and the stigma of divorce as things we believed and did when we were less enlightened people, episodes of violence will continue. From the flashy mass shootings to the unnoticed gay bashings that are rarely reported in the media. Until we can stop telling lies about trans people and using them as pawns in a backlash against things like the achievement of marriage equity and the creeping freedoms to work and live anywhere in the country we like, unhinged and unstable people will take action against us. It’s past time we grew up as a species and gave up the ignorance of men 3,000 years dead.
Omar Mateen hated himself because he was taught to hate others like himself. Some people in his situation end up living small lives filled with hate and anger, lashing out hypocritically. Others simply kill themselves rather than deal with the pain and guilt. Thankfully, very few lash out in real violence. But they’re there.
Some say he was driven to his actions by a fascination with Islamic extremism, but I don’t. The fact that he clumsily associated himself with those who personify on earth the most extreme intolerance for homosexuality was nothing more than an attempt to find a fire hot enough to burn it out of himself. Some others will say his was a story about the incredible accessibility of weapons of war in our society. He could have done what he did anywhere, they point out. A donut shop or a concert venue. But, of course, he didn’t. He did it in a gay nightclub because it was a gay nightclub. In fact, the horror of Orlando was all of the above wrapped in a tidy rainbow-colored ribbon of hate.
This will happen again. Until such time that each and every one of us, off all faiths and origins, calls out hateful speech and ignorant scapegoating of LGBTQ people. Until those who spew it are disowned and outcast. Until we realize we’re not a free nation until all of us are free to live and love and even pee where we want, as we were born to. Until we’re all equal. This will happen again.
It’s up to us. Hate or love. Choose now.
