Enough is enough

The aftermath of the Orlando massacre, probably the deadliest religious/homophobic hate crime in US history, has played out in predictable fashion.  The enemy has been doubling down in various ways, while much of the liberal blogosphere has been screaming GUNS GUNS GUNS so loudly and single-mindedly that people of the actual targeted community who want to talk about the actual problem are having difficulty making themselves heard.  They will be heard, nevertheless.

The enemy's reactions fall into two main categories.  The first, which one must recognize as the more honest, is to reassert and hold high the clear position of the Bible on homosexuality.  You can see a sampling of such viewpoints here and here, though there have been plenty more.

The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is -- I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!

Faggots getting shot is perfectly right and good. God be praised for #OrlandoShooting.

Those Orlando fags are in hell. Soon you will be too. Praise God for his righteous judgements in this Earth.

Et cetera.  Such statements reflect the spirit of Leviticus 20:13 and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  The fact that they shock many people today shows how far the secularized West has moved away from Biblical Christianity.

The second reaction is one I've mostly seen in passing in comments on right-wing forums, but is expressed in detail in Scott Lively's essay discussed here.  The gist of it is that the less-murderous forms of homophobia promoted by most fundamentalist Christians -- denouncing homosexuality as a sin, wanting to "cure" it by prayer or "therapy", and the many forms of ostracism and denigration and discrimination promoted via "religious freedom" bills and other laws targeting gays -- should be accepted and embraced since they are, after all, not as bad as actually killing gays as the Islamists do.

By this kind of argument, the Holocaust should have legitimized and justified lesser forms of anti-Semitism, since those who wanted to subject Jews to lesser abuses than the gas chambers could similarly have pointed out that their bigotry was different in character from Hitler's; blacks, too, should have accepted and embraced the oppression of the Jim Crow era since it was not as bad as slavery.  The idea that a group should simply accept certain forms of abuse against itself, because other forms of abuse which others want to inflict would be even worse, is one that can be made only from a position of utterly oblivious privilege.  It seems to be the default Christianist response to Orlando, though.

The massacre seems, however, to have galvanized thoughtful LGBT people in just the opposite direction -- toward realizing that bigotry must no longer get a free pass and be treated as legitimate just because it is based on holy books.  For example:

-- I think we really need to reaffirm now that no amount of homophobia can be acceptable in our culture. There is no such thi[ng] as harmless or victimless homophobia. All homophobia contributes to violence against us. You can not “disagree” with lgbt people’s “lifestyles” without supporting the rhetoric and legislation that puts us in very real danger.

-- this is religious discrimination. Christians are not inherently “homophobic” but our faith requires us (if we take it seriously) to disagree with the belief that homosexual behaviors are in any way beneficial to a person or to a society.....

-- If you think that being LGBT+ is “harmful” to a person o[r] to society, then YOU are harmful to us. If your interpretation of your faith requires you to believe that, then your interpretation of your faith is harmful to us.

There is a longer response here, and the point is set forth in plain language here, and even more bluntly here.  This, I think, is what will ultimately prove the most lasting and meaningful consequence of Orlando.  If the massacre finally inspires American society to view polite, Bible-based homophobia with the same revulsion and ostracism that racism and anti-Semitism already inspire, and to stop seeing it as a respectable or socially-acceptable attitude, then that will be the best possible monument to the victims.