“… the Freudian ego defence of reification, where an unacceptable impulse is projected onto another and the other is then attacked so as to destroy the “threat” that the other poses.” — My friend Myer
In the preceding post, I mentioned that sometimes, those who speak out loudly against homosexuality are struggling with their own internal same-sex urges and desires.
Sadly, they are terribly guilt-ridden because of their religious upbringing — essentially brainwashing — and superstitious beliefs, and stay in the closet. But in the meantime, they rail publicly against homosexuality — perhaps to throw suspicion away from themselves from within their religious community, and perhaps to fight what they see as the demon within themselves.
Whatever the case, when I wrote the preceding post, I wasn’t aware of news reports that say the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, was, in fact, a closet gay person. There are several reports on the Internet now to that effect — and CBC News mentioned it in their report tonight. He supposedly frequented the Pulse Orlando nightclub for at least three years, and contacted other gay people on a gay dating app.
In other words, it looks like he may have been a Muslin person struggling with his gay sexual urges, and it looks like the guilt got the better of him one too many times. He had been in touch with radical people, and on the night before he committed the terrible massacre, he went to a local Muslim mosque to pray. Add bipolar disorder to his issues along with divorce — according to one report I saw — and we are getting a picture of one pretty fucked-up person.
So, it looks like a closeted gay man may have committed this horrible crime, lashing out at the gay community and, essentially, lashing out at himself and his own sexual orientation, which he was taught by certain individuals — who I won’t name for legal purposes — was immoral and would lead to punishment from God.
Yes, a superstitious simpleton, in many ways . . .
It’s unlikely the Orlando massacre was an act of ISIS-backed terrorism. It sounds like Mateen used ISIS as his excuse — after all, he couldn’t tell the world he was killing gay people because he couldn’t accept his own homosexuality. So, he hitched on to the ISIS cause as a way to hide the truth about himself, and ISIS, apparently, is only too happy to go along for the ride. I’m sure they don’t care if he was gay or not: the fact that he killed in their name makes them happy.
Sadly, this crime is likely to inspire others to commit crimes against the LGBTQ community in the United States, given the numbers of fundamentalists sowing fear and hate in that country. Some of them have even called for the execution of LGBTQ people in one way or another, and while they may be just venting hot air, they probably know that their words may be a tipping point for some people who are on the edge, like Omar Mateen. Like ISIS, some of them are applauding Mateen, and patting themselves on the back. Watch for them to ramp up the rhetoric in the days and weeks to come
So, the root of the problem, it seems, comes back to the exclusionary superstitious beliefs of some people who claim to be Christians and Muslims and who teach their children and followers to hate LGBTQ folks, and to hate themselves if they aren’t straight, like Omar Mateen seems to have hated himself.
On another note: An excellent CBC News report tonight had a segment featuring commentator Rex Murphy pointing out that attackers, like the Boston Marathon terrorists, who don’t have access to guns find other sorts of weapons to commit their horrible attacks. So, gun control may not be the answer.
Still, Rex, one has to wonder if Mateen would have killed as many people had he not had access to guns, which he purchased just days before the massacre — even though he was on the FBI’s watch list and had been interviewed by them several times.
— Jillian
Jillian Page 
He would probably have killed, but fewer people would have died if he’d only had a pistol instead of an assault rifle.
peter
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So, that might be part of the answer, a compromise to the gun lobby: let people carry pistols instead of assault rifles. Problem is, there are so many assault rifles out there now.
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After going back and forth the past few days, they now seem to have settled on this as being his motivation. The ISIS connection had seemed unlikely when he pledged allegiance to two opposing factions of extremists. He didn’t even know what he was talking about with regards to ISIS.
What he was doing with such weapons is very much the root of these attacks with such high casualties. The only higher mass death-toll in the U.S. came with the 9/11 attacks, and this was just one enraged, unstable individual, not a highly financed and coordinated team.
Although many were terribly wounded at the Boston Marathon bombings, the death-toll was much less, at three, than the over four dozen in Orlando. Assault weapons are used by professionals because they are effective, not haphazard.
In recent days, it’s been remembered that Ronald Reagan, who gave the NRA their first big opening to influence national policy, didn’t believe the 2nd Amendment was intended to extend to assault weapons. And, even Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 2008 Supreme Court opinion, “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited…”. It is “…not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
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