Can We Please Stop Pretending This Massacre Wasn’t About Homophobia? We are done being erased.; Huffington Post, 6/13/16

JamesMichael Nichols, Huffington Post; Can We Please Stop Pretending This Massacre Wasn’t About Homophobia? We are done being erased.:

"Few things, to me, feel quite as painful as the erasure of the sexual and gender identities of the victims when it comes to reporting on this attack.

We as LGBT people spent decades being told that we don’t exist or that our lives do not matter. We’ve been murdered in the streets and incarcerated for trying to live authentically as who we are. When we were dying by the thousands from AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s, those in positions of power turned a blind eye.

And now, when are are slaughtered in a nightclub — historically the pinnacle of safe space and community for queer people — the world is trying to erase us once again.

Let me say this loud and clear: this was an invasion and massacre of the queer community.

If you have trouble understanding the idea of a nightclub as a safe, sacred space, then you’ve clearly never been made to feel like your love is illegitimate, incorrect and something that should be hidden away from the world. You’ve clearly never needed a safe space. We always have.

But we will not hide anymore and we will not allow the media — or anyone — to erase what this situation is really about: 49 queer and trans people, mostly of color, slaughtered in their sacred space during the one time of the year when we are supposedly celebrated by the public.

And if your reporting or conversation is not centered around that idea, then you should do some serious self-reflection. Ask yourself, why am I having trouble accepting that part of the narrative? Why do I so deeply deny that someone could be driven to do something so horrific over an immutable aspect of another’s identity?"