Five-Year Anniversary of Pulse Nightclub Shooting…#LGBTQ

Folks, I can’t let today go by without a mention of one of the most disgusting, disgraceful, and straight-up awful actions of the last five years. (Those years being full of such actions, mind you…but I digress.)

Five years ago today, forty-nine people in Orlando, FL, lost their lives while dancing and drinking at the Pulse Nightclub. They weren’t doing anything wrong. They were just out for a night on the town.

And a shooter murdered them out of hand, for no reason at all.

Edited to add: My first version of this blog post said the shooter hated #LGBTQ people. A friend sent me a link to this website, which shows the shooter was more interested in killing any Americans than he was about killing any #LGBTQ people. He also abused his wife physically and cheated on her, so overall he was a terrible individual. This makes his actions no less painful, unfortunately.

Back to the original blog post, already in progress:

However, I wanted to remind you of something else. The rise of human decency after the terrible shooting was something to behold.

I tried to depict this in my book, CHANGING FACES. A memorial walk for the folks who died at the Pulse Nightclub is the last major scene in the novel. My transgender characters Allen and Elaine, plus the others on that walk lived and walked in Lincoln, NE. This was done for a reason, mind.

Lincoln, you see, isn’t exactly the gay-rights capital of the world. But it is learning, and growing, and changing, just as the rest of us are. And there really was a walk there in memoriam for the innocents killed at the Pulse Nightclub, from what I remember…just as there were many other walks in many other places throughout the United States and the world.

Though it’s five years later, I continue to mourn the innocents who died at the Pulse Nightclub. But as one of the survivors said recently on CNN, “Thoughts and prayers are not enough.”

I don’t know what the answers are, mind you. I only know the questions.

So, here are those questions.

For the shooter himself, who’s now dead (so I can’t ask him these questions): Why were you so intent on killing innocent people? What is wrong with you that you thought hate was stronger than love? Why didn’t you get mental health treatment before it was too late?

To those who hate LGBTQ people on principle who have somehow found this blog, I want to ask this: “Why do you feel so superior? Why do you feel you’re any different than anyone else? Why do you feel like you should make your viewpoint the only viewpoint? Why can’t you live, learn, and grow like everyone else? Why must you kill what you do not understand?”

We need to stop hating people just for the sake of whatever label they fall under. Whether they’re LGBTQ, Wiccan, conservative Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever, we need to stop the hate.

I just don’t know how to say it any better.

But if anyone has any ideas on how we can learn how to stop the hate, please chime in. I’m all ears.

———-

Even though this particular shooter wasn’t specifically looking for LGBTQ people (I believe the HuffPost article, along with several others I found after looking including one by NPR and another by the New Yorker), he was a horrible person and he did way too much wrong.

That this shooter’s widow was persecuted afterward was flat-out wrong, too. She had nothing to do with any of that. (I thought that at the time, too, but I didn’t say so. Bad me.)

Seems like there’s a whole lot of wrong in this example, with no good answers. (I am glad the shooter’s widow was acquitted, in case anyone is in doubt.)

The important thing now is, how do we stop the hate?

Come See the New Video for CHANGING FACES!

Folks, there is now a video for CHANGING FACES!

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know what CHANGING FACES is; it’s my LGBTQ-friendly fantasy novel about two graduate students and clarinetists, Elaine and Allen. Elaine is bisexual and gender-fluid; Allen is a typical, heterosexual male. They love each other very much, but Elaine has kept from Allen her gender-fluid/transgender nature. (He does know she’s bisexual and doesn’t care.)

Now, why did she do that? It wasn’t a conscious choice, exactly…she’d been raped years ago, a gang-rape, while a foster child, and the system failed her. That she could find a way to love truly after all that was remarkable, and Allen knew that part of her. (Before you ask, Elaine uses “she/her” pronouns, that being her preference.) But she was terrified that Allen would not understand, and so kept this from him, until one night it all bubbled up.

And he was floored.

Anyway, this isn’t explaining the video, is it? (Or is it?) Because you could instead be watching it, right now, thanks to my friend and fellow author Kayelle Allen. She put a link to it on her blog, and that link is to her YouTube Channel…but really, I need to show you what she did, shouldn’t I? 😉

 

Isn’t that great?

And in case you missed it, a few years ago I wrote a blog for Kayelle called, “Writing a Bisexual Character.” It talks more about why Elaine is the way she is, and how I did my best to be authentic to her experiences throughout.

Anyway, want some links? (Sure you do. Why not? The e-book’s only ninety-nine cents, after all!)

Publisher Twilight Times Books

Amazon US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N3CQKWJ
Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N3CQKWJ
Barnes and Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/changing-faces-barb-caffrey/1125707044
Link to except: http://www.twilighttimesbooks.com/ChangingFaces_ch1.html

Have at! (Then come back and let me know, OK? Sometimes writing seems like shouting into the void.)