Seddique Mateen said that his son, Omar, was upset by seeing two gay men kissing. So he went to a gay bar in Orlando, killing 50 people and injuring 53. There are many things we do not know about this terrible tragedy, but there are many things we do know. We know that Omar Mateen legally purchased guns in the days before his killing spree. We know he was violent towards his ex wife before she was “rescued” by her family. We know he called the emergency services to announce he was an ISIS agent. We know that ISIS has said he was an “ISIS fighter”. We know ISIS has said “the West” should be attacked during the holy month of Ramadan. Above all, we know many innocent people are dead and injured for being what they were and are.
Whether this was a bona fide terrorist attack, organised from a hovel in the Middle East, we do not know. I suppose it matters, but not as much as the very ideology that says it’s fair game to murder people who happen to be gay.
If Omar Mateen was repulsed by two men kissing, it was his problem and his problem alone. It was not that long ago when homosexuality was regarded not just as different from the norm, but positively evil. Some backward cultures and religions still have a problem with it. It is not gay people who need to adapt. Even in the 1970s, to be gay was to be ridiculed and abused – “Queer bashing”, as it was known. Gay people were regarded by some people as perverts, categorised in a way that suggested they were a threat to other adults or, God forbid, children.
It is not just among some religions and cultures that being gay is regarded as wrong, or somehow threatening. Even today, I come across people with insecurities about gay people, ridiculing and belittling those who appear to be different. But there is an easy solution to these problems: if you find the idea of two people of the same sex kissing each other, then don’t kiss anyone of the same sex. If you are offended by homosexuality, then perhaps you have a problem, an insecurity, that needs addressing. If you don’t like gay clubs, then don’t go to gay clubs. It really is that simple.
The point about homosexuality is that, unlike religion, it is real. By accident, I was born straight, by accident others were born gay. No one instructed us to be straight or gay. It just happened. No one deserves to be gunned down just for being what they are.
In America, people are gunned down all the time. Buying a gun is as easy as doing the weekly shop, so Mateen was able to buy killing machines and use them without alerting a soul. But in America, the gun lobby will argue -and I am not making this up – that Mateen would have been stopped if everyone in that Orlando club had been armed. A hundred or more people, armed to the teeth, could have turned Mateen into worm food within seconds. Come on: it shouldn’t and doesn’t work like that.
Omar, said his father, was “a very good boy” and I guess that he really believes that. The boy may have been mad, he may have been ill, he may have been an ISIS fighter – we will know soon enough. However, what he did and how he was able to do it cannot be justified under any circumstances, ever.
They say you can’t argue with a sick mind, but you can stop that sick mind buying guns to kill people. That is the truth America, one day, will have to face up to.
