Like so many people whose words I’m reading, I’ve been carrying the shooting in Orlando around inside me for the last two days. It is only this morning, as I wake again to find that the weight on my chest has not shifted, that I start to put a true name to it: grief. Late to the party, I know, but what I see around me and feel is the endless sea of people grieving, for fifty lives, and for the loved ones left behind, for whom this will not be over when the news cycle moves on.
There’s so little to say that hasn’t been said. I wasn’t in Soho for the vigil last night; I should have been. I should have been there to lend my voice, instead of allowing myself to stay silent and choked, because silent and choked is the aim of every act of hate and act of terror. This morning my Facebook feed is flooded with photos and videos from the vigil, with words of tenderness, with the unbelievable, brave hope that love wins out in the end.
And I feel bitter. I feel bitter because I used to believe - still believe - that love is a stronger force than hatred, that love is a selfless thing, an inexplicable thing, that radical love for a stranger is one of the most powerful things in this world, that we cannot ever think that looking after our own is a substitute for being truly compassionate - but lately it has been harder and harder to believe this. Like so many others, I find myself slowing down, stumbling, ever more aware that that the onus is on us, on the LGBTQ* community, on anyone standing against hatred and injustice, to keep making our voices heard against global establishments, governments, and status quos that protect their own interests before all else.
Love Wins - but only when backed by sweeping gun law reform. That’s the thought that went through my head looking at those posters and placards on Old Compton Street. I am - I admit - weighed down by a profound despair, and all I can do is wade into it with the belief that at some point it will turn to anger, which will turn to protest.
Already these events are being co-opted into narratives on all sides to suit all agendas. There are those on the right who have moved immediately to using the shooting to fuel their anti-Muslim beliefs, rejecting out of hand the notion that this has anything to do with access to guns and conveniently staying silent on the LGBTQ* lives taken. There will be those on the left who will not want to talk about the role extremism played in shaping this man’s actions, lest they be perceived as Islamophobic. The truth is that this is a story that belongs to nobody. It is a series of events of incredible complexity, set in motion by fear, enabled by a 225-year-old law.
It is a truth that this happened because LGBTQ* people were targeted, as they have always been, for centuries, and it is a truth that mostly frequently the purveyors of that violence in the US have been white men. It is the truth that you can die for loving who you love, fancying who you fancying, and we all today feel the chill of the target on our backs, the target we sometimes manage to forget.
It is a truth that this happened because a man legally had access to weapons with devastating killing power.
It is a truth that this happened because this man listened to religious extremists for guidance.
And now the latest news is that this man was a regular at the club and had a profile on Grindr. So it is also a truth that this man was driven to violence over desires and feelings within himself that he had learned were wrong.
It is easy, at times like these, to make a blanket statement condemning America. That vast, unwieldy nation that so much of the rest of the world looks towards, that young country restlessly seeking its identity, that place that uses words like “opportunity” and “freedom”, words that we over here blink and shuffle at, and find embarrassing, to our own detriment. A country of extremes, a country of will, a country that has been at the forefront of innovation, exploration and art, that houses some of the greatest cities in the world, a country of excitement. A country where the wheels of government turn crushingly slowly - too slowly for those who have died, too slowly for those who will die when this happens again, as it will.
A man will walk into a church or a school or a club, and open fire. And he will do so not because he is Muslim (for the majority of mass shootings in America are committed by white males), but because he purchased weapons legally. Because he went through the background checks, waited for his licence, handed over his money, and received a weapon capable of ripping fifty lives out of the world. When the Second Amendment was written, providing citizens with the right to keep and bear arms, those arms constituted inaccurate and unwieldy muskets. I cannot believe that the Founding Fathers - men who were, after all, trying to build a world of freedom, freedom from fear - would make that same amendment today were they faced with a world where members of the public could be given an assault rifle capable of gunning down 130 people in an instant. No citizen in the world should be able to carry that much death.
If America were to fulfil the promise they made to the rest of the world - to become, truly, the Land of the Free, they could be a beacon to us. In the UK, we bang our heads against an electoral system designed several hundred years ago to protect the interests of landowners - imagine a world in which the USA gives up its weapons and says “You know what? It’s not 1791. It’s 2016. The world has changed and we will change with it.” What couldn’t we do then? That would be an extraordinary world. But it didn’t happen when children died at Sandy Hook, and my belief in America isn’t so blind that I think they’ll do for the LGBTQ* community what they didn’t do for school kids.
I know that love will win, in so far as Orlando will come to back to life, that LGBTQ* people will continue to love boldly and brightly, that we will all drown ourselves in fucking rainbows to show our defiance, our lack of fear, that hate and terror have not sent us scurrying into dark corners. But I also know that more people will die in the doing of this. More lives will be lost as the gears grind slowly towards a less hateful world, and before long we will have to mourn again. That is the grief, and the heartbreak, of these few days: not only do we mourn for those who have been lost, but those losses yet to come.
