The true troubles that LGBTQ community endures are not what so many of its critics think it is. Those on the right, for example, claim that what ails them is their mental health. It had been a longstanding argument against gay people and now is common to be heard against transgender individuals. The right essentially says since their behavior is “abnormal” and so is something in their head. Other times, the right claims that the problem the community deals with is twisted sexual fantasies. It is the reason that some refer to the community as “LGBTP”—the P standing for pedophile. But these assertions are false and only waste our energy by keeping us talking of nonexistent problems. What really troubles the LGBTQ community is the prejudice they are objected to, which leads them to being attacked.
A truly heartbreaking example was the shooting in Florida at Pulse. As you may recall, it was a deeply upsetting shooting. A gunman, Omar Mateen, went to the bar and killed forty nine people, making it “the deadliest attack affecting the LGBTQ+ community in American history.”
Surviving the tragedy does not mean escaping its horrors. Thanks to his courage to talk of that night, Brandon Wolf, now an advocate for LGBTQ+ civil rights and gun safety as a response to the tragedy, recalls how he witnessed the grueling last moments of people he loved: “Truth be told, I got a sense right away that [Drew and Juan] weren’t going to make it. We were standing on the sidewalk outside the club, and I had the realization that we’d left them inside and tried to go back in.”
Though this attack was nine years ago now, there is no reason to think attacks like those are not prevalent today. For instance, there was news of a man, El Mahmoud, being “arrested on Monday evening for ‘attempting to strike members of a local running club at a park, making multiple passes and driving recklessly before fleeing,’ police said in a press release on Tuesday.”
There is some disagreement surrounding their motives. Regarding Omar Mateen, it has been suggested he had been an ISIS sympathizer: “During the standoff, Mateen called 911 to pledge allegiance to ISIS. He also mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers.” It is fair to say, at the very least, that prejudice played a role. Omar Mateen knew who he was attacking. As NPR reports, “[M]ultiple media outlets reported that some Pulse regulars recognized Mateen and said he had frequented the nightclub as a patron. At least two men said they interacted with Mateen on gay dating apps.”
In Omar’s case, regarding the legal ramifications of his motive, the point is moot, since he escaped any persecution by killing himself after his murdering. It is nonetheless important to highlight his prejudice, because it demonstrates that it is a dangerous force against the LGBTQ community.
In El Mahmoud’s case, the hate charge that could arise from proving whether prejudice was involved in some way is pending ; it is hard, though, to say whether it might come to fruition. Dave Aronberg, former state attorney of Palm Beach County, points out when discussing the case, “You have to get in the suspect’s head. It makes it tough to do, unless the suspect says something outwardly that shows his intention.” It is worrying to me that there can still be doubt as to whether the law will impose a hate crime charge, when Mahmoud committed the attack after being approached by a gay man and when he tried multiple times to attack specifically a group of LGBTQ runners.
The thing is, the law in this case functions in the same stringent way the “missing link” argument works against evolution. This argument, as Richard Dawkins explains in The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, essentially goes like this: Creationist say that because fossil records have gaps—that is, does not show a clear link between one generation of animals to others—then the whole theory of evolution can be thrown out. To Dawkins, it is an unconvincing argument—enough evidence is there to make the conclusion that evolution is real.
To make his case as to how absurd this is, Dawkins likens it to getting footage of a crime unfolding, only to use it against the conviction because the crime itself was not shown. His analogy revolves around a butler committing a murder, which had already been an “open and shut case” based on the facts that there were “Fingerprints, footprints, DNA from a sweat stain on the pistol, and a strong motive against motive all point towards the butler.” Then, video recording complicates the matter:
One of them shows the butler in the act of opening the drawer in his pantry, taking out a pistol, loading it, and creeping stealthily out of the room with a malevolent gleam in his eye. You might think that this solidifies the case against the butler even further … [However], [t]he butler’s defense lawyer astutely points out that there was no spy camera in the library where the murder took place…”There’s a gap in the video record! We don’t know what happened after the butler left the pantry. There is clearly insufficient evidence to convict my client.”
In a similar fashion, the law surrounding hate crimes can sometimes be so focused on getting every little piece together, that it simply makes it challenging to persecute a hate crime. It is as if we cannot simply make a reasonable conclusion for the sake of justice. It is as if the law needs the criminal to outright say, “I am doing this because I hate them for their sexual orientation.”
Since I am not beholden to such a strict way of seeing the actions of Omar and Mahmoud through the lens of US law, I can say that I think prejudice played a vital role and we should not ignore that. To say otherwise robs the LGBTQ community of justice.
So what do we do?
An important step is to empower the LGBTQ community through establishing their intrinsic worth. Here, I am being careful with my wording. I say “establishing” because intrinsic worth is not to be argued for. And it is not to be argued for because it cannot be argued against. That intrinsic worth functions this way is a direct attack on prejudice. Indeed, intrinsic worth and prejudice are oppositional forces, caused by the same cause. Prejudice makes the person subject to harm for their being, whereas intrinsic worth, for the same reason, demands their respect and more importantly their safety.
Failing to call for the community’s intrinsic worth will fall short of what we need against prejudice. Consider, for example, the implications of probably the most famous words from one of most beloved speeches in America by Martin Luther King Jr.: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Content of their character? LGBTQ community cannot be okay with being judged by that. Indeed, it is impossible, for their character is the very thing at stake. If they try to be judged by their character, their conduct will be degrading. After all, it will mean that they have to change it into what others see as worthy of rightful judgement. They will have to hide who they really are.
The reason for this hiding would be that, regardless of how their critics put forth time-wasting concerns for them, one of the biggest problems that the LGBTQ community faces is prejudice. We do not have to align ourselves with the law’s framework to establish this. Aligning with the law’s framework in these instances can come with the consequence of ignoring the prejudice at play by making it seem as if there is not enough evidence for it. Once we agree that prejudice played a role, however, we can do impactful work. The next important step being to establish LGBTQ community’s intrinsic worth. Its irrefutable nature can serve to denounce and help prevent deadly attacks against them.
