Omar Mateen's sexuality - why does it matter?

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techstepgenr8tion
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15 Jun 2016, 10:12 pm

There seems to be a lot of speculation about his preference recently, and it seems to be something people are latching onto as a means to sidestep having to evaluate whether they can really be lenient on radical Islam and pro-LGBT.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/ ... sma/nrfwW/

While on one hand while I'd love to say I don't get it I know I'd be lying - people who don't want to believe what they're seeing will grab at anything they possibly can to make events fit their belief systems. It's clear that he took whatever life frustrations and disaffections he had to a fundamentalist ideology and and went on a suicide spree all while pledging support to several radical groups. It's clear that it's a system that gave him a framework for action, as it has given many men and women like him.

Whether he was gay, whether he wasn't getting laid or didn't have social status, no matter how society might have failed him - nothing removes the delivery and conditioning system of weaponized religious ideology from the equation.


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ASPartOfMe
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16 Jun 2016, 12:18 am

The possibility that a gay person might hate gays enough to massacre them seems bizarre to most people. If people think something is bizarre they will talk about it a lot. The concept of dispising who one is should be familiar to anyone who reads Wrong Planet for any length of time. The name of this website is suggestive that we are not human. Most people are not part of a small minority that is fundamentally different from the mainstream and do not understand the internalization of vicious stereotypes.


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16 Jun 2016, 12:24 am

There were red flags from an early stage of his life of a Cluster B personality disorder:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/ar ... d=11657236



naturalplastic
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16 Jun 2016, 1:01 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
There seems to be a lot of speculation about his preference recently, and it seems to be something people are latching onto as a means to sidestep having to evaluate whether they can really be lenient on radical Islam and pro-LGBT.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/ ... sma/nrfwW/

While on one hand while I'd love to say I don't get it I know I'd be lying - people who don't want to believe what they're seeing will grab at anything they possibly can to make events fit their belief systems. It's clear that he took whatever life frustrations and disaffections he had to a fundamentalist ideology and and went on a suicide spree all while pledging support to several radical groups. It's clear that it's a system that gave him a framework for action, as it has given many men and women like him.

Whether he was gay, whether he wasn't getting laid or didn't have social status, no matter how society might have failed him - nothing removes the delivery and conditioning system of weaponized religious ideology from the equation.


Why are you so upset about nonexistent things?

Nobody said that his being gay took ISIS "out of the equation", nor is anybody being "lenient" toward radical Islam. Theyre just trying to figure out why he did it. Every scrap of data matters.

Both being gay, and being of Islamic background happened to be factors in this particular case.

But neither being gay, nor having any Islamic background was a factor with the Columbine shooters, nor with Andre Brevik, nor the Virginia Tech shooter, or Sandy Hook, etc etc etc...



The_Face_of_Boo
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16 Jun 2016, 1:05 am

On my social network, I can see a lot of the devout mulsims I know sharing articles about his past sexuality. They are like "look! he was gay or bi! see? He was not a real muslim, he has nothing to do with true islam!". So they just deny their society and religion's homophobia by de-muslimizng him... through...homophobia.

Forgetting the fact of his allegiance to isis and the fact that isis adopted the massacre.
And the fact that investigation showed that he consumed a lot of Jihadist propaganda online, including the infamous isis' beheading videos.
And they don't want to admit that Isis' hate against gays is rooted in the Quranic texts and hadith.

It's like saying Elliot Rodger's motif is an isolated incident and denying any influence coming from puahate or similar online communities, web communities that largely promotes hatred against women from what I heard.



heavenlyabyss
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16 Jun 2016, 1:49 am

I think it matters Assuming he was actually gay (maybe, maybe not) if he had been raised by a father who was tolerant of gays he might not have hated himself and it turn would not feel the need to project all that hatred onto other gays.

I think the father actually deserves quite a bit of blame here. Not a good role model it seems. And he is still in pathetic denial. I actually feel a little sorry for him.

The Koran does need to be called out for homophobia. If a Muslim chooses to embrace the homophobic aspects of the Koran, then they don't have my respect. This includes those who don't act violently (like the father). Still doesn't have my respect even though he's leaving the "punishment up to God."



techstepgenr8tion
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16 Jun 2016, 5:25 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
The possibility that a gay person might hate gays enough to massacre them seems bizarre to most people. If people think something is bizarre they will talk about it a lot.

It sounds like the whole American Beauty meme - ie. core identity and its urges vs. conditioning and environment.

I don't have a problem with people looking at it and trying to figure out how the guy became what he was, we typically want to get data on any mass killer and see if there's anything we had to look out for - that's generally a productive measure. It'd just be really sad if more people than not use this as an evasion of the issue though, and I'm running into these people online already.


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