A Time to Stand With Gay Americans
Everyone else is focusing on terrorism and guns, favorite topics of politicians. Even our dems are being gingerly about the fact that this was a massacre of LGBTs. It's somewhat comforting to see this article. There is no better time to combat homophobia than right now when there is some palpable emotional identification/connection between the larger community and our community.
Some of June’s gay pride celebrations happened last weekend, but many are still ahead. The one in Louisville, Ky., is among them. There’s a parade scheduled for Friday. That’s your state, Mitch McConnell. You should go.
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Just show up. And by doing so, show that the absence of “gay” or “L.G.B.T.” in your statements immediately following the Orlando massacre — and in the statements of so many other prominent Republicans — isn’t because you place us and our concerns behind some thick pane of glass with a Do Not Touch sign that stays up even when blood and tears pool beneath it.
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But more conspicuous than what Romney and Trump said was what so many other Republicans didn’t. Bemoaning the carnage, they justly condemned the Islamic State and violent extremists. They rightly paid tribute to “first responders.” But this specificity didn’t extend to the lives and loves of the people killed. Even Rick Scott, the Republican governor of Florida, initially sidestepped the subject, failing to emphasize that many of them spent their final terrified minutes in a place where they had sought precisely the comfort and belonging that they didn’t always feel on the other side of its walls.
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Roman Catholic leaders, too, shied away. Statements by the bishop of Orlando and by the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said nothing about a gay nightclub or gays. Such omissions so troubled the Rev. James Martin, a best-selling Jesuit author, that he posted a video commentary about them on Facebook on Monday afternoon. Twenty-four hours later, it had been viewed about 700,000 times. “If the murders had happened, God forbid, in a church of a particular Christian denomination, Catholic leaders would decry the murders and then naturally express their solidarity with members of that denomination,” he said in the video, adding that for the most part, “this was not done for the grieving L.G.B.T. community.”
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“We” includes leaders of both parties... This is one of those moments, in the wake of terror, when we find the most apt and evocative ways to underscore our oneness and renounce our fear. When we make grand gestures. When we make pointed ones.
So Majority Leader McConnell, pick your rally. Speaker Ryan, accompany him. Governor Scott, attend the funerals of gay victims. Other Republicans and Democrats, recognize L.G.B.T. Americans with both your words and your presence at gay pride celebrations.
You want to show our enemies what America stands for? Then stand with us.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/15/opinion/a-time-to-stand-with-gay-americans.html
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It was the first Gay Pride Parade that year in San Francisco.
The event was called, "Save Our Human Rights" and I had a t-shirt that said that on it along with some friends that were there that day.
That was the beginning. Here it is some 40 years later and I see what has occurred.
The LGBT community needs just as much support as they did in 1976 is what I think, especially in lieu of recent happenings and not just a solitary event, but likely hundreds of others since 1976 and before that time as well unfortunately.
Was proud to have worn that "Save Our Human Rights' t-shirt that day in San Francisco and glad to know that it may have had an impact whether we knew it or not at that time.
I remember Harvey Milk and his campaign to successfully obtain a seat on the Board of Supervisors and the murder of Milk and Mayor Moscone and the insane murderer named Dan White. I remember the aftermath of the trail which basically let Dan White off the hook with his "twinkie defense", the riots at City Hall the night that a verdict was reached and the words that were said. Those were some rough times or so we thought.
all these years. Now it feels so much closer to the top and yet the response being all about guns and terrorists shows plainly how little genuine popular empathy there is with our lives.
What a historic time and place you experienced! 
It just happened to be living in a certain place at a certain time most of it is the reason. I worked right near City Hall and it was very scary times indeed. When Dan White was at large, the building I worked in went into lock-down mode.
Then you heard about what happened later via the now Mayor Feinstein (that's how she got her start in politics being the mayor of San Francisco).
As for Harvey Milk, he was an interesting man and he had a fine sense of humor I remember. That was why his campaign for supervisor had some aspects to it that many thought were highly funny yet necessary at the time too.
I was greatly saddened by the deaths of both Milk and Mayor Moscone and to have that horrible Guyana/Jim Jones thing happen right after that was just a bit too much for me and yes, I would have gladly passed on most of these events as they all involved murder en mass.
I view myself as being no hero, I was just there at that time and invited to go to this event with a friend I knew that was active in the gay community and local politics as well. Come to think of it, he was on Harvey Milk's campaign committee.
Just know that things have indeed changed.
At least the chant of "Out of the closet and into the street!" isn't often heard these days. 
For all of us. We've lost our compassion, and only left with political philosophy. I didn't realize I was so naive.
This whole first page is filled with "your a islamophobe, you blame America, it's the guns, stupid, that's not an assault rifle, get a bow to hunt with". Only one or two stories or articles for the victims.
Or, let's start one, but let's blame the shooter because he had to be gay. Self-hate. 
If I'm having a hard time with this, I can't even imagine what it's doing to you and other good people. I'm truly sorry, BtA.
I was shocked and sad when it happened. I cried thinking it could be me or many of my friends or my husband or even my mother (see the story I posted about the mom who died saving her son). I expected the rants about guns and the focus on right-wing assholes making homophobic remarks. But, what really made me mad...pissed off...sick....
I am sick of the people congratulating themselves or whining about getting posts hidden because they are running with the self-loathing homo angle, y'know because he took selfies and had "duck lips" and beat his first wife, as those are obvious signs of being homosexual. 
I am sick of people nit-picking about the media claiming it was the worst mass shooting. I am sick of the people who'd rather "defend" the shooter by going off about "Islamophobia" and giving nothing more than nod to his victims, if that! I am sick of the strawman arguments, the "No True Scotsman" and other logical fallacies being passed off as "legitimate discussions". I am sick of being told "how" I should be angry.
I know what it means. I have always known. Just as I know there are good people here, real allies, but I also know homophobia and heterosexism still rule the day; even here.
I know you know what it means. I'm not sure it's going to change here, either.
Appreciating your support to all of us, herding cats.
