Orlando...

I've been in shock for a couple of days now. A man walked into a nightclub in Orlando Florida and opened fire, killing fifty people. Like every other blogger out there, I feel compelled to give my two cents worth on the tragedy in Orlando. There is a sickness in the world (particularly in the United States), and lots of us are talking about it. So here it is, my opinion. Take it or leave it.

News stations are calling it an act of terrorism, claiming that the shooter had ties to ISIS, claiming that terrorist sects claim responsibility... It's all bullshit. Here's what happened:  It was a hate crime, plain and simple. A man walked into a nightclub, the patronage of which were members of the LGBTQ community, and opened fire. This raises two questions:  The first one, of course, being "Why?" The second one being "Why are the media treating this as anything other than the hate crime it is?"  I don't have an answer to the second one. But the first one? Yeah.  I know why.

Let's first look at the shooter, whose name I'll not put in print because I don't want to give him any notoriety. This guy was, on the surface, a happily married-with-children Christian Muslim father. According to reports, the week previous to the shooting, he became offended when his wife and kids saw two men kissing in Orlando. This, his father said, was the catalyst that caused his explosion of hatred and pain into that nightclub. Two men. Showing love for each other. Did either of them harm him? No. Did their lives matter to him? No. Did he even know they existed prior to that moment? No. But their very existence so vexed him that he had to commit an act of domestic terrorism to wipe out the gay menace.

But wait.

Then something interesting came out. The gay club he shot up? HE FREQUENTED IT. Not visited, not cased the place. He'd been in the club as a patron more than twenty times. He used gay dating apps and, according to some, propositioned men for sex, all the while continuing to keep up his stance that homosexuality is against the word of God, and is therefore wrong.

See where I'm going with this?

Take a child. Any child. That child feels love toward one thing or another. Then you, the parent, tell the child that such love is wrong and shameful. You tell the child that you won't love him anymore if he continues that kind of behavior. What you've done is created the perfect recipe for a psychopath. It's wrong thinks the child. But I feel this way, so I must be bad. I have to hide what I am. But if I'm that thing, I'm bad. I don't want to be bad. I have to get rid of what's bad so I won't feel tempted toward it anymore.  Though years of conditioning, shaming, blaming, and persecution, you create an unstable individual that hates everything that he is because he can't be it. And so he goes out and buys a gun, but not just any gun. He goes out and buys the kind of gun for which there can be no other use. Fast shots, high power. His only purpose was to kill a lot of people in a short period of time. Why? Because he hated them for being gay. Just like he was. Because someone, somewhere, told him that if he was gay, he was a mistake. God wouldn't love him. Parents wouldn't love him. If he was gay, he was bad.

Now let me drop a little common sense and truth on you people: If your religion, no matter what it is, teaches hatred and bigotry in any form, it is wrong. Wrong. It's not a religion anymore. It's a hate group. It. Is. Wrong. Period. I've not been a member of the Christian faith for a while now. I was raised Baptist, and my whole formative opinion of the religion was one in which hatred was the norm, the true path to heaven was money, and shitty people did shitty things except on Sundays when they got together and lied about how shitty they were. I've since learned that most members of the Christian religion aren't like that, but I can't go back. I still remember the taunts of faggot and queer, and they weren't even directed at me. They were directed at sweet kids in my Sunday-School class. In a church. Where the teachings should be centered on "love thy neighbor."

But, as I've said in the past, it's always the crazy ones who ruin it for the rest of us.

And while we're on the subject, there is only one reason a gun like that one exists. You can scream second amendment or hunting or home defense all you want to, but that gun exists for one reason, and one only. Lots of bullets, short period of time. Kill lots of people.

To the LGBTQ community, my heart aches for you. Everyone deserves to be loved. Everyone deserves to enjoy their lives, and to pursue that happiness with whomever you want. Love is never bad. Love is something to which we can all aspire. I'm so very saddened by this act of hatred, and I know it will take time to heal, but heal you shall. So many great strides are being made toward equality that I hope none of you give up. I hope you all stand tall and proud of who you are. And I will stand with you. I have so many friends who are gay, lesbian, trans... Only they're not gay, lesbian, trans, or any other label to me.  They're just my friends. I love them. And if anything like this happened to any of them, I'd be screaming at the top of my lungs for justice.

The shooter took the coward's way out. There will be no justice for this senseless crime. And that's the hardest part. The perpetrators of this tragedy all point at him and say "we don't know why," but they damned sure do. They made him. They made the hatred. They fostered it, nurtured it, and perpetuated it. And it needs to stop.

If you're the church-going type, I encourage you to go to your church and take a good look around. If your church preaches hatred or intolerance (which is like "hatred-lite"), leave. Believe in whatever God you want, but don't put that faith blindly into the hands of men who hate. Don't give yourself to that kind of cancerous nature. The LGBTQ community only wants to live, to have basic rights and dignity. They want the same things you do. They are you.

In closing... I said I won't give the shooter's name a mention because I don't want to give him that kind of power or press. I hope his name is forgotten, though not his actions. But there are people who must never be forgotten. There are people who did not deserve to die that night, who went out with loved ones to enjoy their lives, and whose lives were cut short. These are their names. Lest we forget.

• Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34
• Stanley Almodovar III, 23
• Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20
• Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22
• Kimberly Morris, 37
• Luis S. Vielma, 22
• Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30
• Amanda Alvear, 25
• Enrique L. Rios Jr., 25
• Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35
• Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32
• Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24
• Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40
• Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37
• Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 
• Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22
• Darryl Roman Burt II, 29
• Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32
• Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21
• Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25
• Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez, 25
• Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50
• Martin Benitez Torres, 33
• Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26
• Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35
• Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25
• Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31
• Oscar A. Aracena-Montero, 26
• Miguel Angel Honorato, 30
• Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32
• Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19
• Cory James Connell, 21
• Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37
• Luis Daniel Conde, 39
• Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33
• Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25
• Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36
• Jerald Arthur Wright, 31
• Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 
• Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27
• Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 
• Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49
• Yilmary Rodriguez Sulivan, 24
• Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 
• Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 
• Frank Hernandez, 27 
• Paul Terrell Henry, 41
• Antonio Davon Brown, 29
• Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24
• Akyra Murray, 18