On Queer: On Pulse

On June 11, my mother walked into my room, gently woke me up and gingerly sat at the foot of my bed. “Christina Grimmie was shot,” she told me, granting me some silence afterward to internalize the news. She knew I had followed Christina for years, tracking her career and supporting her music, and that her murder would be hard for me to swallow. I was touched that my mother cared enough to make sure that I heard it from her. After all, I was human, and death is hard. It’s reasonable for anyone to grieve.

But the next morning, there was no wake-up call. There was no gentle conversation at the foot of my bed -- just a post on Tumblr lamenting a “massacre.” I didn’t fully comprehend what had happened until I had checked my notifications. And I read about how, less than a year after it became legal for me to marry another man, 49 members of the LGBTQ+ community were murdered and another 53 wounded at an Orlando nightclub because someone allowed a radical homophobe and known threat access to a gun.

I spent two hours straining to compose myself before I walked downstairs to see my parents watching CNN, oblivious to how this tragedy was affecting their closeted son.

“ISIS,” a newscaster cried, quickly met by the nods of her peers. Less than 12 hours after the shooting, I watched as the deadliest hate crime against the LGBTQ+ community in American history was turned into a terrorist attack on a “dance club.” I watched as the identities of 102 queer victims (the majority of whom were Latinx and several whom were trans) were swept under the rug as tabloids tried to dissect the alleged links to terrorism.

I found it hard to believe that in the 29 years of his life, nobody had challenged the shooter’s blatant homophobia. Nobody had taught him acceptance or respect, nobody had found issue with the hatred in his heart. But perhaps that’s the society we live in -- one where homophobia is not acceptable, but also not worth challenging or correcting.

Even worse is that in the days following the attack, I felt the need to hide my grief, fearing that my parents might be concerned by my over-attachment to these “strangers.” As if you have to be queer to care about other members of the community. As if my gayness is the only reason I would be affected by such a horrible act. Why is it that one woman holds more weight than 49 queer men, women and non-binary humans in terms of sympathy, in terms of grief, in terms of respect?

So here’s my response to the Pulse shooting: You do not have to be queer to sympathize with us. You just have to be human.

At the same time, do not take this away from us. It isn’t about terrorism, or the Middle East, or inexplicable motives. It’s about a country that, 47 years after the Stonewall riots, still hasn’t figured out how to protect our community. It’s about the fact that seeing two men holding hands can enrage a man to the point of massacre. It’s about the fetishization of lesbians, the use of trans men and women as entertainment, bisexual erasure and the fact that non-binary people are dismissed as confused or pretentious. We are humans. We are a community. And it would be absolutely fabulous if we could get some basic human respect in the wake of this tragedy.

This column was written by an anonymous resident of the Rainbow House. Have a suggestion for an article, a question, or a topic you’d like us to cover? Email us at rhousecolumn@gmail.com!

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this article, the shooter in the Orlando nightclub Pulse shooting incident was listed in the count of victims. However, the columnists intended for the number of victims to be listed as 49, not 50, as was printed. The columnists did not intend to note the shooter as a victim of the shooting or as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. The Daily regrets this error.