After Orlando: In the gay community we are reeling and the answer is not to kiss less
Clubs like Pulse was where gays and lesbians could feel safe and relax. Has that been taken away?
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Your support makes all the difference.It was possibly seeing two men kissing in Miami that set him off in the first place, or so the shooter’s father has said. It maddened him also that he was with his three-year-old son at the time.
Men kissing in public. That this should not be a shocking notion any more, at least to most of us, is testament to the amazing - and amazingly swift - progress we have made eliminating prejudice against gay, lesbian and transgender people. My boyfriend is still coy about it, but he’s old school.
True, it’s mostly younger gays in places like New York or London, who don’t think twice about behaving in public just like straight people do; holding hands, nuzzling. All the battles fought since Stonewall by the LGBT community in America were for this moment to arrive: where we could begin truly to think there is nothing special about us. Not special bad or special good, just human.
This weekend our Hudson Valley town where we spend weekends, will be celebrating Pride. We will go, enjoy the now mostly familiar parade of friends and chit-chat in the beer tent by the river. But we’ve heard the rumours: that after six successive years, our pride nearly didn’t happen. Gay marriage is now the law of the land; fatigue, even complacency, has crept in.
Some are calling Orlando attack especially egregious because it is Gay Pride month in the US. I doubt the shooter knew that. It only matters in the sense that the killing of so many reminds us that, no, actually our battle is not done. Even at our little event on Saturday, the urgency will be back.
In the first hours since the massacre, the focus of most political reaction and much of the media coverage in the US was on the killer’s declaration by telephone just beforehand that he was doing it in the name of Jihad. ISIS Vs US, was the screaming front page of the New York Post. It was a terrorism story.
Let’s be clear, this is not just the worst single mass shooting in American history, it is also the worst attack, by far, against the country’s gay community. It joins a litany that extends back to the 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk, the San Fransisco city supervisor - and first openly gay elected official in the US - and the death of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, in1998 after being beaten and tortured.
By Monday, officials and political leaders were taking more care, to at least take note of the victims here. There have been so many mass shootings - it is something that has become “mind-numbingly familiar”, said Hillary Clinton in an eloquent address in Cleveland - but when has one minority been so coldly targeted for slaughter as happened in Orlando on Sunday?
The killer had “targeted LGBT Americans out of hatred and bigotry,” Ms Clinton said. To mourning gays and lesbians she added: “You have millions of allies who will always have your back, and I am one of them. From Stonewall to Laramie and now Orlando, we have seen too many examples of how the struggle to live feely and openly and without fear has been met by violence.”
But rarely violence on a such a scale as this, and so her words will be received gratefully. I don’t see Donald Trump attempting to match them, he has been focused on self-congratulation. And gays across America will be surely touched by the thousands who poured onto Old Compton Street in London to show their love and support.
Just about all of my gay friends have spent nights in clubs just like Pulse, fighting the decibels to try to hold conversations, even it’s just ordering another vodka and tonic - it’s hard flirting effectively when you're competing with Cher - and eyeing the crowd, prospecting, when you were single, for some fun or romance. In those days for certain, and still today for many, these were pilgrimages not just to places of music and mild madness but to places where we felt truly safe, amongst our own, amidst our tribe.
There is so much pain today. It’s hard to stop your brain and really try to imagine what everyone who was in Pulse witnessed. Those still alive. I almost can’t do it. I am guessing you can’t either.
But part of the pain is this: after coming so far we are jolted so far back again. How long will it be before gays, lesbian and trans people can start going out again and not feel a small clench of fear and worry that the place they used to feel safest in may not be safe at all? How long before gay people kissing in public won’t have Orlando and this killer picking at their synapses?
What matters, though, is that we don't allow oursevles to be cowed. Which means that they next time my boyfriend demurs and tries to pass me off with a peck on the cheek at the airport or anywhere else, I won’t let him get away with it. We should all kiss in public. Otherwise the monster in Orlando wins.