Posts

Showing posts from June, 2016

Orlando, Hate and Homophobia

Image
The attack in Orlando was a gay hate crime. The Prime Minister today initially omitted this fact from his expression of sympathy. He later changed his language , calling the mass shooting “an attack on the gay community and an attack on all of us - on all our freedoms, the freedom to gather together, to celebrate, to share time with friends.” He went on to say that there “are people outside our country, and some within it, who hate the freedoms that we enjoy and would seek to threaten them and undermine them with violence... Together, at home and abroad, we continue the fight against terrorism and stand up for the values of our free nations.” There seems to be no acknowledgment of the glaring irony. What are these “freedoms that we enjoy”? Certainly not the freedom to marry. For that, we must argue the case during a plebiscite that is sure to unleash homophobic hate. It's difficult to feel that it's "an attack on all of us" when the LGBTQ community ar