@slypokedog interesting my post recieved an edit but others can mention my moniker. Dont make me go MM on you sir.
At least three couples died together. Joshua McGill had been able to get out to safety, but then heard a wounded man still inside pleading for help. A stranger. He told the stranger "don't worry, I got you". The stranger had been shot in both arms. Joshua tore up his shirt for tourniquets, carried him outside, then realized the stranger had also been shot in the back and was bleeding profusely. He approached a person he did not know and asked for this man's shirt to staunch the bleeding, then carried the injured man to a police car to get him to the hospital. The officer told Joshua he had to keep the injured man conscious. The whole ride, while being drenched in a stranger's blood, Joshua said anything that came to mind. The injured man, whom he just knew as Rodney after asking his name, is expected to live. Please, someone buy Joshua McGill a drink. Edward Sotomayor pushed his boyfriend out of the club to safety, then took a lethal bullet in the back. At the Aurora theater shooting, a straight man protected his girlfriend at the cost of his own life. The young woman received hate mail and death threats from MRAs who said she was not hot enough to justify his sacrifice. Our community is kinder. However, the imam who stood with the gay community has received death threats from both homophobes and Islamophobes; there is a lot of overlap. One of the oldest victims was a 49 year old straight woman who liked to go dancing with her gay son. Most young men would die of embarrassment if their mothers danced with them at clubs, he liked it. She died, he lived. The youngest was an 18 year old who just graduated high school with honors, star basketball player about to start college on scholarship, whose family had taken her to Orlando as a graduation present. She called her mother from the club screaming for help. The mother of another victim knew her son would come home hungry after dancing half the night so before going to bed she prepared a snack for him. He never ate it. The Faith World Baptist Church has openly cheered the deaths at the club. Kansas had an emergency legislative session to figure out their budget crisis. Years of massive tax cuts for the rich and big business, slashing service, and ending regulation (the Ryan budget applied to a state) left them not with the promised prosperity but huge deficits. During the session, one legislator decided yesterday was the perfect day to introduce another antigay law. Oklahoma says they have a bathroom emergency. For most of us a bathroom emergency means we really have to go and there isn't one around, or the lines are a mile long. For Oklahoma, it means they realized transgender people need to eliminate bodily wastes just like cisgender people and they have to put a stop to it. The right can barely contain their glee. The dead are mostly gay and mostly Latino/a so not important. The killer was Muslim. He was not an immigrant; he was born here and his parents arrived during the Reagan Administration, but hate does not need facts. And Obama is coming to take their penises, I mean guns! What more could you ask for? Trump, who had been on the defensive due to Trump U, the "Mexican" judge, the money not going to veterans charities until the media investigated, and his extremely thin skinned response to Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren calling him thin skinned, feels he's got his moxie back. Swaggering and telling lies that he knows will just be repeated as fact. He called for a ban on all Muslims and on people from countries where terrorist attacks have been launched against the US or allies. By my top of the head count this includes England, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Israel, India, and Pakistan. And oh yes, the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Can he ride hate and fear to the White House? This is why the right has to pretend it was not an attack on the LGBT community, they have to scare everyone that they are at risk and only a blithering bully, I mean STRONG MAN, can save them. Further, you asked what can you do? Be an ally. Don't let homophobic remarks and "jokes" go unchallenged. Volunteer. Go to Pride. Think of a cause that interests you, even if not specifically gay-related, and work for it, because we are all connected. This is what concerns me, not rasheedfan's incoherent rambling about angels polluting the gene pool (the gene pool was unknown when the bible was collected, and imaginary beings have no impact on the gene pool) and so somehow being gay is bad. At other times I might be amused at the adventures of straight boys in gay clubs, but just not right now, OK?
I'm betting the above picture is someone trolling. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if Omar Mateen was a closeted gay, who battled his own demons (about homosexuality) and this was the best way he knew how to handle it.
A tweet from something that looked like "lbgt Phoenix" but was actually "ibgt Phoenix" claimed to switch from Clinton to Trump. People in Phoenix have never heard of this so called "group" and "they" had never tweeted before, so looks like a fake. Did not stop Trump from saying "the gays" love him. You know, like women, Blacks, Hispanics... Harvey Milk's nephew Stuart said that this assault should not turn our community into haters of another group. Most of us agree with him. I need to see something more than anonymous post to believe anyone has suddenly become a Trump supporter after he spewed so much hate. We know hate. We see it. We don't vote for it. We don't think hate saves us or the country or the world. Anything that increases kindness and cooperation and community helps us. That's why I told Further supporting any worthy cause helps us. Anything that increases suspicion and intolerance and violence hurts us.
It's interesting how the father is using this as his 15mins of fame. He would have been an ass if his son was demonstrating any confusion in his sexual orientation. It's also being reported from a right wing news source that Mateen's wife deleted all of her social media accounts. The inference being that she knew what he was getting ready to do and didn't say anything.
Well, the President has spoken, we now know he has no intention of changing anything. He did chastise me and anyone else that thinks like me. I really don't mind, I already knew he hasn't got a clue, but I do wish one of his supporters with quarter would buy him a clue! The course he sets will leave the nation open to more attacks by people from within that identify with ISIS and the harsh exclusionary teaching in the Koran. He offers nothing to change what we have seen and will see more of to come. Disarming (guns) all other Americans will not change this predictable out come, as they will continue to use what ever weapons are at their disposal, knives, clubs, pressure cookers, airplanes, and new innovations. I do not feel chastised, I feel anger and embarrassment. It is rare for a President to be the source of embarrassment.
Obama wants more gun laws. The shooter passed the ATF background check. Need a law requiring background checks, or something. Hiliar says the attack was in response to a YouTube video.
I think it's great that there's a symbol to show solidarity..... but how did something so generic as a rainbow become the defacto symbol of being gay?
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/...ow_became_a_symbol_of_the_glbt_movement_.html At first the banner was lavender. Then the rainbow.
I totally thought it had something to do with the Wizard of Oz. Edit - aha! it does "Pop culture also gave the rainbow resonance with gay activists, perhaps because of Judy Garland and her signature song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Garland was a major star to the gay community throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Gay men came out in droves for her performances, and, from World War II forward, many in the LGBT community referred to themselves as “friends of Dorothy,” a phrase that seems to have derived from Garland’s performance in The Wizard of Oz. The pivotal riots at the Stonewall Inn occurred just hours after Garland’s funeral, and her death may have helped provoke the unrest. Garland had earlier bragged, “When I die I have visions of fags singing ‘Over the Rainbow’ and the flag at Fire Island being flown at half mast.” Garland died in 1969, before the popularization of the modern LGBT flag, but some Fire Island houses were reportedly draped in black."
Strangely, the only time I ever heard the term "friend of Dorothy" was in the movie "Clueless", used to describe the gay guy that Alicia Silverstone's character had a crush on. Hooray for Hollywood-perpetuated stereotypes.
One of my favorite Jack Lemon/James Garner movies is My Fellow Americans and there was a part in the movie where they end up marching in a gay pride parade, and there's a bunch of guys dressed as Dorothy. It's a great flick if you haven't seen it.
