The 70s for me seemed more like the world in which the horrible violence of Orlando could take place. Yet, I do live in a state (Oklahoma) that there is a lot of homophobia and if you live in a small town, it's much worse. Fortunately I don't, I live in OKC (Oklahoma City) and I now work at a job where my employer does not discriminate against me for being gay. In fact, there are at least two other people who are gay where I work.
Still, I well know what it's like to live in fear, to go to a church where you have to pretend to be straight because if the other members of the church find out you're gay, it's all over with. To them, you become a pedophile, a pervert, a rapist, because not only will you have sex with your own gender, but there is nothing else you won't do. I know very well because I've been there, done that.
I now go to a church that you could consider a gay church, Expressions Church, even though I know heterosexuals are welcome there and a few do go there I'm sure. That's not the same in a lot of churches, even though now, many are opening their doors to LGBTQs.
I have experienced violence for being gay back in the 70s when I first came out. Three huge men waited outside a gay bar in OKC for the first gay person to come out the door, just so they could take their hate and anger out on that individual, and that individual happened to be me that night, but it could have been anybody coming out of that bar, just because it was a gay bar.
Yet many of my LGBTQ brothers and sisters have had their experiences of violence, many who did not survive, such as Matthew Shepard. I survived and I'm happy to know the world is a safer place than back then but we do still have a long ways to go. We will still experience violence and some of us will pay the ultimate price.
Yet, we cannot go back into the closet, even if our nation, perhaps under a Trump presidency (God forbid!) became like Russia; a free nation for a while at the end of the Cold War, and then a tyrant took over, forcing many LGBTs to go back into hiding, for fear of being arrested, harassed, beaten and even killed. We have to stand up and stand strong because we cannot allow our nation, and our community, to fall back into the control of hatemongers.
I continue to cry for Orlando, as it is a reminder of the pain I had hoped we left behind, and because young, gay men and women who were just starting to live their lives, discovering their potential, with a bright future ahead for them in a world they could marry the one they love, died needlessly at the hands of bigotry and hate.
That individual who killed all those beautiful young people was a homophobe. His religion was just the vehicle he used to excuse the hate within himself. That hate was a self-hate because from my long experience of meeting many homophobes throughout my lifetime, they're all latent homosexuals unable to accept the feelings going on inside themselves.
So let's don't blame a religion, or a race of people, or any minority accept those who are responsible; politicians, preachers, Imans, and other political and religious leaders who espouse with their words from their bully pulpits hate and bigotry, working to divide us as a nation and as a people.
As a nation, let us continue to grow in enlightenment and understanding of each other. Let us be willing to stand up for other minorities that have become the target of those from the extreme right to vilify and paint as the enemy. They are the enemy; those espousing hate and ignorance, not the minorities they target.
We’re better than that as a nation, and we're stronger than that. Today it's LGBTs, Hispanics and Muslims, and tomorrow it will be yet another minority taking the brunt end of their anger and hate toward anyone who is different, and perhaps you will be a member of that minority this time and it will be you they're calling for to be stopped at the border, arrested, ridiculed, beaten, and killed.
Let it be no more and let those who espouse such hate find a closet themselves this time, and hide there with their lips firmly closed in fear of the light of day shining brightly on the hate brewing inside them, until the end of time.