Orlando shooting exposes so many of America’s faultlines
The array of initial reactions illustrates just how confused the political response might become. Whatever else this is, it’s not about immigration. Omar Mateen, the suspected killer, was born in America. Whatever compelled him to commit such a terrible act cannot be laid at the border of a foreign nation. His hatred was home-grown.
Some will say it is about Islam. Mateen was Muslim. But mass shootings are not unique to Islam or alien to America. There were 330 last year alone.
Some will say it is about security. Mateen claimed allegiance to Islamic State. At the time of writing the Isis-affiliated news agency, Amaq, has claimed responsibility for the attack, although an official claim from Isis has been disputed. But he appears to have had no previous convictions. He may have been inspired by Isis’s brutality, but you can’t arrest people for what’s in their heads.
Some will say it is about religious integration. Interviews with his father and former wife suggest he was deeply homophobic and violent. The target of a gay club was clearly not an accident.
His father told NBC he once become enraged by two men kissing in public. His ex-wife told the Washington Post he was abusive and unstable. “He beat me,” she said. “He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished.” All this could prompt a liberal broadside against both Islam and the perils of multiculturalism.
But Muslims did not invent domestic violence or homophobia. And the determination with which some on the right have fought same-sex marriage indicates tolerance and acceptance have struggled to find a home in significant sections of Christian America. Indeed, just hours after the attack Texas’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, seemed to suggest that the victims were responsible for their own deaths: “Do not be deceived,” he tweeted, citing Galatians chapter 6, verse 7. “God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”