“I still refuse to ever be afraid”: Orlando LGBT+ attack

I feel like it’s difficult to move through the day without seeing another incident blight the world and throw us into turmoil once again. Today I awoke to the news that 50 innocent people had been killed. It was a senseless attack of a barbaric nature, carried out against members of the LGBT+ community.

Quite frankly, I don’t think you need to identify as LGBT+ to care or to understand why this matters as much as it did. This mass shooting in Orlando, Florida is the largest hate crime in modern decades. It was a planned attack on those who are “different”. It was the disgusting murder of the innocent.

I don’t think you need to identify as LGBT+ to care or to understand why this matters as much as it did

I was recently in an LGBT+ club in Leeds. If you are someone who defines under the LGBT+ spectrum, you will know the sensation of finding such a supportive and safe space is unlike anything else. I can only imagine that such a feeling is what those 50 victims experienced moments before their night was so suddenly and brutally uprooted.

The world today is continually teaching us that we can be killed for who we are, what we believe and who we love. It’s the reason that my mother was initially afraid when I told her that I was in a same-sex relationship. She grew up in a time when gay men would be beaten to death for being too camp, or just for being out at night. I assured her that times had changed.

The world today is continually teaching us that we can be killed for who we are

But was I wrong?

In 2008, Stonewall found that 20% of LGB people had experienced a hate crime because of their sexuality. What has happened in the US over the past day has only reinforced how serious this problem is. To think that I could be killed for something so banal, so trivial, is the most painful part.

I could easily be with a man. I’m attracted to men. I have had male partners and gender doesn’t bother me either way. In fact, to begin with I figured it would be easier to deny who I am and just date men, be in relationships with men, and maybe marry a man someday. On the harder days, I consider how I may well have made my life more difficult, and at the worst times I believe that to be true.

To begin with I figured it would be easier to deny who I am and just date men

However why should it even matter? I am the same person, with the same interests and morals, and the same mentality whether I am with a man or a woman. I don’t suddenly become inherently evil or corrupt because I am in a relationship with a woman. So do I deserve to be hated? Do I deserve to be harmed? Do I deserve to be killed?

The same must be asked of the victims of this attack. To say they were perfect would be incorrect, but for someone to believe that they deserved this is deluded. For a single man to believe that he had the right to kill anyone is deluded.

I am the same person, with the same interests and morals, and the same mentality whether I am with a man or a woman

I can only continue to hope that times will change. I can only continue to hope that eventually everyone will see through the idiocy of believing LGBT+ individuals are in some way ‘wrong’. The outcry after the events in Orlando has shown us all something quite remarkable though; so many people do care and so many people will fight to stop murders like this from ever happening again.

But what I would most like to say to those responsible for what happened today is this: today the world has taught us that who you love can get you killed. However I still refuse to ever be afraid.