Orlando massacre a deadly reminder of anti-gay hatred

The massacre at a gay nightclub in Florida comes at a difficult time for the LGBT community in the United States, which is still facing violent bigotry even as their civil rights have been significantly reinforced.

A hardening of attitudes towards lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people has heated up since the US Supreme Court legalized gay marriage a year ago -- a historic decision that outraged many socially conservative Americans.

Flying the flag of religious liberty, a tactic used in the battle against abortion rights, these conservatives used new local laws to curb gay rights.

Mississippi allowed churches and private businesses to decline services to gays and others if doing so would violate their religious beliefs. Another law in North Carolina specifically jeopardized transgender rights.

For gay rights activist Michelangelo Signorile, the Orlando tragedy is "a reminder of the animus against LGBT people that still exists, and the ever present danger with which we still live."

"Even in 2016, our mere existence can still be considered a threat," another LGBT rights advocate, Gabe Ortiz, wrote in The Washington Post on Monday, one day after the shooting rampage that left 49 people dead and 53 others wounded.

- Gunman had voiced anti-gay rage -

Many questions remain about the early Sunday massacre at the Pulse club in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in American history.\
But relatives and acquaintances have painted a picture of the slain shooter Omar Mateen, an American of Afghan descent, as a violent and unstable young man who had beat his ex-wife and expressed homophobic views.

Mateen's father told NBC television that his son was infuriated by recently seeing two men kissing, in front of his wife and son.

"He got very angry," Seddique Mateen said. 

A colleague of the 29-year-old Mateen, who worked as a security guard, also said he made homophobic comments.

"I quit because everything he said was toxic and the company wouldn't do anything," Daniel Gilroy told local media.

Chad Griffin, the head of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT rights advocacy group, told MSNBC that a "toxic mix" of hatred and access to guns had made Sunday's carnage possible.

- Twitter storm -

On Sunday, some Republican lawmakers seemed to sideline homophobia as a possible motive, instead focusing on Mateen's proclamation of allegiance to the Islamic State group during the attack.

The lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, went one step farther.
After the attack, Patrick tweeted a Bible verse from Galatians 6:7: "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows."

Widespread outrage quickly erupted over the tweet, which was immediately interpreted as blaming gays for the attack in Orlando. Patrick quickly deleted it.

The attack was hardly the first against the gay community.

Eric Rudolph, who was behind the Atlanta Olympics bombing in 1996, had earlier planted a bomb at a lesbian bar where five people were wounded. 

According to an analysis of FBI crime statistics from 2011 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, LGBT people were more than twice as likely to be the victims of a violent hate crime than Jews or blacks in the United States.

"We've made bigotry a matter of public policy. It shouldn't be a shock then that bigotry has trickled down into our lives in so many deadly ways as a result," Ortiz said, referring to legislation like the Mississippi law.

"This act of hate was meant to cause fear... But we cannot be afraid. That's what homophobia and transphobia feed off, and we have come too far to be forced back into a closet."

Source: AFP