(Note: Like most who are reading this, my thoughts today have been consumed by the events in Orlando. My reactions trickled out in a series of separate, but related, Facebook status update. This is an effort to compile my reactions into a single, hopefully coherent, response.)
Although it is now being reported that the Orlando shooter had in recent days proclaimed his loyalty to ISIS, and had been investigated twice for possible ties to terrorist organizations, we don't really know what were the shooter’s motivations. According to one account I read, the shooter's father said it had nothing to do with religion, but that his son had become "angry" after seeing two men kissing in public a couple of weeks ago. That would suggest a very profoundly disturbed individual rather than someone carrying out an Islamist agenda.
Last year, in the wake of the mass shooting in Charleston, the Justice Department was resolute in its refusal to label that incident an act of terrorism. I defy anyone to provide a credible explanation as to what was substantively different about Charleston from Orlando, and why the latter should be called 'terrorism' and the former not so called.
18 U.S.C. § 2331(5) defines Domestic Terrorism as follows:
"(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—
--(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
--(B) appear to be intended—
----(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
----(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
----(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping;
and
--(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States."
It would appear that both Charleston and Orlando meet the definition. So, if we must call Orlando ‘terrorism,’ let us at least be consistent and call the many other acts that meet the definition above ‘terrorism, ’ the murders of doctors who perform abortion and the bombings of abortion clinics, and the many other acts of violence directed towards specific groups that occur in this country,irrespective of the religious identify of the perpetrator or the group targeted. And please let's dispense with this absurd notion that Muslims have a monopoly on the tactic of terrorism.
The habit of both the media and the public at large of attaching, without question, the 'terrorism' label to any mass shooting in which the shooter happens to be Muslim, but curiously refraining from doing so when the shooter self-identifies as a Christian (the Charleston mass shooting, for example), must be called out and it must stop. Either label them all as terrorist actions, or, as would be my preference, refrain from labeling any of them acts of ‘terrorism’ unless and until there is clear evidence of, as one friend put it “deep, actionable and operational ties” to a known terrorist organization. The proclamation of loyalty on the part of a deranged individual hardly qualifies.
Sadly, we in the LGBT community are no strangers to acts of violence carried out by profoundly disturbed individuals, many of whom have professed to be Christians. What these acts of violence have all held in common is is not any particular religion; what they have all had in common is a specific hatred aimed at a specific community. It is possible, even likely, that the shooter had no significant links at all to any terrorist groups beyond his own proclaimed loyalty to ISIS. So is this really an act of terrorism, per se, or is it case of a very troubled individual who found, in the twisted ideology of ISIS, a hook on which to hang his preexisting rage? The nature of bigotry of all types is, and always has been, that while it will use any pretext it can find -- religion, bad science, etc. -- to justify itself, in the end it never actually requires that pretext for its continued existence.
Some will ask – and it’s a fair question – whether it even matters by what name we call the events in Orlando. The dead are no less dead, the injured no less injured regardless of the name we attach to it. But the question of how we understand and talk about these events is critical to us, as a society, as we try to find ways to reduce the mind-numbing frequency of these events and to reduce the level of harm they inflict when they do occur. The selective labeling of these incidents, calling one incident ‘terrorism’ and a parallel event no so, feeds the government establishment’s exploitation of these incidents in ginning up support for its endless wars. It also feeds the gun lobby’s agenda of preventing us from taking some of the more obvious steps we could take to, if not eliminate mass shootings, at least make them more difficult and reduce the harm they inflict.
In 2004, with Republicans in firm control of both Congress and the White House, the assault weapons ban that had been enacted early in the Clinton administration was permitted to expire (it had been enacted in 1994 with a 10-year expiration date). No politician, of either party, lifted a finger to renew it. That ban was reintroduced in Congress in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, but was defeated 60-40 in the Senate.
Today, in Orlando, we see the result. Had this shooter not had access to an assault rifle, but only a conventional rifle or handgun, he still would have been able to to shoot people, but likely not nearly as many. Every legislator, Republican or Democrat, who either failed to make any effort to renew the ban, or who voted against its reinstatement in 2013, has blood on his or her hands today.
Finally, to our political leaders: spare us please, your "thoughts and prayers" about the victims and victims' families of the Orlando mass shooting. Either give us real action in the form of legislation aimed at reducing the slaughter, or just STFU.