Never Again Orlando

I am writing this as the dust still settles after the Orlando shootings.

My heart aches for Orlando. The loss is unfathomable for me and I have found myself in and out of tearing up and feeling overwhelmed since I heard what had happened. I have no words to tell of the emptiness I feel – so I will not attempt to put words to it. What happened was wrong. It was hateful. It was evil. Most of all though, it never has to happen again.

Emptiness is probably the closest word I can find to how I have been feeling. I find myself staring at walls, or driving with no music; emotions passing through my vapid psyche like black clouds through gray skies. I have no eloquent response for this grief. I will extend no sympathies because I do not know how I could possibly say “I know how you feel” to a family grieving the loss of a dear child to such a senseless and thoughtless crime. I do not know how you feel. I know no loss like this. I have no pain to compare to this. I only feel my own grief over the crime against life and consciousness itself. I feel it in my bones.

For me to say that what happened in Orlando is wrong is an understatement. It goes against everything that I believe a modern society must stand for. We must stand in solidarity with all of our brothers and sisters. We must love and accept people from all walks of life. We must not kill each other. These are simple contingencies for a modern life, but they all too often go unheeded. This vicious crime goes against humanity to such a degree that it almost takes the breath right out of me. But more than air, I think it leaves me gasping for reasons. Why? What now?

This takes me to my next point – this is an act of pure hatred. I have seen much arguing about whether this is a hate-crime, a mass-shooting, or an act of terrorism. I believe that in our never-ending desire to label and classify everything to be better understood and more neatly filed we are actually missing the point. 50 people went out to have a fun night with their friends and never made it home. A mother was jolted out of bed by a text message from her son – holed up in the bathroom at Pulse – at 2:08AM that read “I'm gonna die.”50 people lie dead after an act of senseless hatred. Arguing over the classification of the kind of attack only serves to distract us from taking the next indicated step – a step towards solidarity – a step towards peace.

The camp talking about how this is a hate-crime want to place the blame for this attack on America's homophobia. This is a real, and pressing issue in America. Members of the LGBTQ community have lived their whole lives persecuted, mocked, protested, and even in varying degrees of illegality. Imagine if you grew up your whole life knowing that you were not allowed to marry the man of your dreams? I cannot even begin to comprehend how heartbreaking that must feel. Imagine if every time you kissed your boyfriend in public you ran the risk of someone shouting slurs at you, or a mother telling their child to “look away”.

The group that want to refer to this incident as a mass-shooting have one clear agenda: gun control. I think that it goes without saying that America's second amendment has long been overdue for reconsideration. This amendment was written by old men wearing gray wigs with wooden teeth when muskets averaged a 20 second delay between shots. The man who carried out the Pulse massacre went into a store and legally purchased what is called an assault rifle (the name enough should tell you why it shouldn't be legal). I fail to understand why assault is illegal, but assault rifles are. But again, I feel labeling this act as just a mass-shooting takes away from the gravity of what really occurred here.

Finally, there is a group in America that wants to call this a terrorist attack. Terrorism is a subjective term typically defined by matter of perspective. What we refer to as the war in the middle east is actually perceived as an act of terrorism by the people we are attacking every day. To give an example, did you know that 150,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the invasion by the United States? Did you know that US soldiers treated their bullets with depleted uranium to cause radiation poisoning to the people they shot at? Is that not a war crime? Is that not terrorism? Moreover, of course the killings in Orlando are an act of terrorism. No one should dispute that. The problem is that terrorism has come to be associated with only one group: Muslims.

I see people, otherwise intelligent rational people, talking about how Islam is a scourge on the face of the earth. How their prophet Muhammad was a warlord who kept sex slaves. That the Islamic belief system is inherently flawed and violent. If we are really fighting a war on terror, then why all the talk about Islam? Is this a war on terror or the next crusade? All of this Islamophobia running rampant in America again clouds our eyes to the real common ground between all mass killings – evil.

Evil is defined as that which is both immoral and malevolent. I know that there can be no dispute to the evil of mass-murder. Why then do we justify these same evils in our own culture while baring down on “radical Islam” with all the weight of holy hell? We talk about how we are waging war against evil itself, or a war against terrorism, but really we are waging war against the people we see committing these evil acts. The war on terror is actually a war against terrorists. You cannot ever successfully wage war against an idea. We turn our brothers into our enemies for their transgressions, but in doing so we only feed into the cycle created by the myth of redemptive violence.

Jesus teaches to love your enemies, but ironically, it's his followers we see being the loudest on the front lines of the campaign against Islam. That teaching though, to love your enemies, that is the way out of the trap created by the cycle of violence.

When something violent happens to us, the typical response is to either return fire even harder, or to sit and stew in a form of not-so-passive-agression. Both of these responses actually just feed into the cycle and, in a sense, keep the violence in circulation. Jesus presents a third option – to rise above the violence, and respond with love.

The most important aspect of this teaching, in my opinion, is that Jesus does not tell us not to respond, or to pretend like nothing happened. The point is not to be dismissive or accepting of violence, or to be passive towards it. The point is to knowingly and willfully respond with intentional love at the time it is needed most. In order to respond at all, we must acknowledge and name what happened. The events in Orlando were horrific, hellish, and absolutely evil. This shooting stands against everything I want for the society I live in. But, I will not respond with more violence or more hatred. This isn't just about prejudice or guns or Islam or terrorism or even about one man and 50 victims. The real battle is between love and hate, fear, evil, and a society that all too easily responds to injustice with indifference. The good news is that love always wins, and the light always illuminates the darkness.

  I don't pretend to have all the answers to the big questions. How do we respond to Orlando? That is up to each of us. I know that tonight I will cherish the blessings in my life a little more. I know that next time I hear someone making a joke about our neighbors in the LGBTQ community, I will not be afraid to speak up. I know that I will do anything in my ability to illegalize the sale of assault weapons. I will remember in my day to day happenings that there is always the option and opportunity to transcend violence and end the cycle. And, most importantly, I know that I will never stop believing that love conquers all.