realsesmith:

Waking up this morning to the news about the shooting at Pulse in Orlando, and the predictable flowering of ignorance and hatred around it, so let’s be clear: This is the deadliest mass shooting in US history. It took place at a gay club filled with a diverse crowd, including numerous people of colour. It took what should have been a playful sanctuary and turned it into an abattoir.

This has nothing to do with the race or religion of the perpetrator.

This has everything to do with the systematic homophobia and transphobia built into the very fabric of US society, from state-mandated sexual education curricula telling youth that queerness is a ‘choice’ or ‘abhorrent lifestyle’ to legislation banning transgender women from using the bathroom to outdated and unscientific FDA guidelines barring men who have sex with men from donating blood for at least one year after their last sexual encounter. This is about homophobia spouted left and right from legislators who refuse to crack down on hate crimes, about tolerance for hate at the highest levels of government.

This is about out systemic inaction on gun control, and the tired expression on the president’s face today as he tried to articulate, yet again, that the country needs to do something. It is about the hundreds of hypocritical, vile legislators and candidates who proudly trumpeted their thoughts and prayers while knowing full well that they voted down assault weapons bans and other checks on gun ownership. It is about the presidential candidate who took to Twitter today to congratulate himself on being ‘right on radical Islamic terrorism’ and insisting that the president ‘resign in disgrace.’

You’re killing us, America. The choices that you are making are killing us. And now, you want to pit us against our Muslim brothers and sisters, labeling this an act of ‘Islamic terrorism’ because it happened to be committed by a Muslim man. You think that you can distract us from your institutional homophobia and transphobia by evoking a bogeyman, and it’s not going to work. I stand with all my queer and trans siblings today, and I stand with all my Muslim siblings, including those who are queer and trans. I stand against hatred, against this country’s refusal to engage with its gun problem. I stand with the as yet unknown number of people who are waking up this morning facing acquired disabilities and lengthy stays in rehab because a homophobic man decided to come shoot up their safe space.

I stand for a world where I don’t have to write things like this anymore.