My ANGRY response to the Orlando shooting

Last night as I sat at my computer working on writing a romance story between two men, reports of the Orlando shooting in a gay night club began to flash up on my sites.  Facebook and Twitter lit up.  The news channels I read began rolling updates.  I watched with horror and a huge sinking feeling in my stomach as the news reports changed from “mass casualties” to “20 dead” to “50 dead, 53 in hospital.”

My first reactions:  shock, horror, grief, disbelief.

Then the initial responses from my friends on social media came rolling in.  Celebrities and politicians from all over the world made their stances which were quickly retweeted and shared.  And I became angry.  My shock and grief did not lessen.  But I became so fucking, bloody angry.

My nine-year-old son is sick at the moment.  I was up half the night with him as he has a throat infection and an ear infection.  I hugged and consoled him as he cried in pain, but at the same time my heart was hurting for the mothers who will never console their son’s again.  And why?  Because of fucking, bloody stupid people.

Friends began to post “Rest in Peace” and my anger sky-rocketed.

Rest in fucking peace?  Why should an innocent man who was out for the night and having fun, who was then senselessly gunned down, rest in peace?

No.  I say don’t rest in peace.  I say get angry.  The fury that must be boiling at the knowledge that they were targeted because of their presence in a gay bar should be turned on the ones to blame for this act of terror, act of violence, act of hatred.
Haunt them forever.

Haunt the ones who encourage, support and aspire to radical religion.  I’m not saying those who are Muslim, because I think you have a perfect right to practice your religion.  I know and adore many Muslims.  It’s those who are extremists that have not read and understood the Quran.  And I’m not saying any other religion is off the hook either.  Because you radical Christians have also had a big part to play in this tragedy.  You think you’re not a radical because you’re Christian?  Ha.  Tell me if you would invite a gay man to dinner.  Tell me if you would stand up for a black man in the street.  Tell me if you would sit and discuss your religion with a Muslim cleric in a calm and rational manner.  Tell me if you’ve supported any politician, political party or law that takes away basic rights to these sections of the community.  If the only one you answer “yes” to immediately is the last, then you’re the radical I’m pointing my finger at.

Haunt the ones who speak homophobic words in public arenas and act in ways to take away someone’s rights because they identify in the LGBT spectrum.  If you discriminate and persecute LGBT people, whether you use religion as a reason or not, you have contributed to this horror.  Being gay is not a crime.  Being gay is not a choice.  Being gay is not something that is wrong, disgusting or filthy.  Open your closed eyes, open your closed heart, and learn people.  Stop sitting in the fucking corner like a little kid and say “It’s wrong, it’s wrong.”  There is nothing wrong apart from your attitude.  You should be ashamed of yourself and understand that your actions in speaking in homophobic ways have contributed to this.  It doesn’t matter if you only told three people.  You aligned yourself to a way that is morally and humanly wrong.  And then you encouraged others to do the same.  Be haunted you selfless, uneducated idiots.

Haunt the ones who can’t see that more guns are not the answer.  Gun laws.  Gun control.  2nd Amendment.  I’m sick of this shit!  I don’t give a hoot about what some law was made over a hundred years ago.  They allowed slavery then too.  If you can abolish slavery, why not gun rights?   Can’t you see that you’re not arming the innocent people to defend themselves? But instead allowing the criminal, the mentally unstable, the angry, the radical, the extremist and the terrorist to play with fucking assault rifles!  You’re not saving yourself – you’re giving the bad guys the right to shoot you.  As an Australian I just cannot fathom how Americans can sit there and think that these shootings are not going to happen.  Cling to your 2nd amendment, cling to your rights, cling to your stupid belief that it is not the guns who kill people but the one who holds it… sure.  But then you take it on your shoulders that you have allowed this to happen.  Where a man can easily purchase a gun and walk around with it, of course you are going to have dead people and their blood on your hands.  Does Australia have guns?  Yes – but they’re illegal to the average person in the street, not easily obtained, easy to spot because not everyone has one and holy shit, if someone spots a gun in your car you can bet that you, your family and your friends will soon have the TRG knocking down your doors and confiscating all weaponry.  We too will have criminals who hold guns, but holy shit USA – never, ever, ever in the numbers that you guys have.  The criminals just can’t rock up to Walmart with a credit card and buy one.  The amount of guns on your street make the innocents die at such a rate that you have to see that your beloved 2nd Amendment just cannot continue stand.

These 50 people who died yesterday, the more that will probably lose their life over the next days, the hundreds of thousands of innocents in the world who have died this year due to crimes of terror, religion and homophobia, the innocents killed accidentally by guns and wars of others, and the hundreds of thousands who will die in the next six months of this year?  Haunt the guilty like mad!

So especially, you need to haunt the man I think is a catalyst for this action. 

Haunt the one who gives permission for their bigotry, encouragement for their homophobia, praise for their anger, support for their rights to bear arms… and broadcasts it to the world daily to make himself look and feel good. Which man has been speaking of allowing every man, woman and child to have a gun and he will support their right?  Which man has been deliberately and intentionally riling sections of the community with his hate speech against Muslims, Mexicans and Chinese?  Which man has spoken out in support of the reintroduction of discriminatory laws against LGBT people?  Which man has used his extremely powerful global platform to encourage and entice people to act physically and violently towards non-whites, non-Christians, and LGBT people?  Which man speaks without empathy, without knowledge and without a care about who he hurts?
Which man takes no responsibilities for his actions?  And let me give you a hint.  The answer is not Brock Turner, although a parallel can be made.

The answer to this tragic night isn’t simple.  Hard decisions will need to be made in order for this never to happen again.  We have a radical extremist, one with a mental problem and violent history.  We have homophobia and the rights of humans.  We have gun control.  We have people enticing, encouraging and applauding the actions of the one who carried out this crime.  We have people excusing the actions of this man.

And we also have broken-hearted, scared and horrified people.  To those who lost loved ones, my heart breaks for you.  To those who are working to heal the wounded, console the shattered, investigate the incident, and give back respect to those who didn’t deserve to have it taken away in the first place, strength be to you.  Thank you for your compassion and help.
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To those who died… go forth and haunt in anger.  A change is needed, my friend.  A change is needed.