I am not going to start this post by stating my connection to the gay community. I will explain later why I consider this unnecessary and, in the long run, unproductive.
I have spent the week monitoring the outpouring of grief and less appropriate emotions after the horror in Orlando. The incident that seems most pertinent was this; a British talkshow guest stormed off the set after saying, “You don’t understand this because you’re not gay.”
Of course, he was wrong. I’m sure that the parents of the 14 young women murdered at the École Polytechnique Massacre in 1989 understand perfectly. They were targetted because they were women. I suspect the family and friends of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, honour guard at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, who was shot because he was a soldier, have a vague idea of what grief is like. Grief is universal, and each of us feels it his or her own way.
In the guy’s defence, I think he walked off the show because the host and the other guest immediately jumped on him, nattering away at the same time, each trying to make the same point. He couldn’t get a word in edgeways. Watch the clip, I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.
But lousy talkshow hosting aside, this incident demonstrates a problem we can all try to deal with: the selfishness of grief.
How We Deal With Grief
Grief, especially in modern society, tends to be a private thing. Unlike the ancient Irish, we do not have official mourners to keen over coffins, making an outward show of how we are feeling inside. As an unfortunate result, our grief, which is a form of depression, gets turned in on ourselves, and we become self-absorbed in it, often to the extent of hostility towards others. We demand special status because of our grief. It seems to us that our grief is so much more powerful than anyone else’s.
While this is a natural reaction, it is not a path we should be going down. Taken to extremes, this attitude can easily lead to hatred, and around the cycle goes again.
Guilt
It is also the precursor to another downward spiral: guilt. If we start saying “They were shot because they were gay,” it is an easy route to “If they hadn’t been at that gay nightclub…” and then, “I shouldn’t be going to gay nightclubs,” and even, “If I wasn’t gay I wouldn’t be so upset.” Which is not a healthy direction for anyone to go. Every person should have the right to live the lifestyle he wishes to (within reason) but he does not have the right to say that he has any more right to his lifestyle than anyone else. We should all be fighting together to get that right for everyone.
The Gay Bar
Why is a gay bar so important to a gay person? Everybody likes to have a friendly place to relax with like-minded people. But a gay bar takes on so much more meaning when society allows certain people nowhere else to express themselves. If I want to put my arm around my wife and kiss her cheek, I can do it anywhere, and nobody will comment. (Considering our ages, we might get, “Aren’t those two old coots sweet.”) If you can’t put your arm around your lover in public without hearing derogatory comments, then any place you are free to indulge becomes very important to you, and you should have the right to gather there in safety.
When is a Reason not the Reason?
Just because two facts come into conjuction does not mean one causes the other. Were these people shot because they were gay, or Latino, or because they drank alcohol? Only in the deranged mind of the shooter. The true cause of their deaths was that a man was taught by his society to hate. If we continue to focus on the gayness or skin colour of the victims, we fall into the terrible victim’s mistake of allowing the perpetrator to continue controlling the conversation. The shooter himself is not important. Vengeance will achieve nothing. The lifestyles of the victims are not important to this conversation. They cannot and should not be changed. What is important, what must be changed, is the society of hate and violence that created the situation.
The Good Guy
In an interview, former CIA agent Amarylis Fox stated “If I learned one lesson from my time in the CIA, it is this; everybody believes they are the good guy.”
I remember back in my university days having a roommate who was an Egyptian journalist, and a great supporter of the Palestinians. I have always been a supporter of Israel and its right to exist, but it was fascinating to discuss that situation with an intelligent person who had firsthand knowledge of how the Israeli government treated the Palestinian people. It was one of those times when the black-and-white ethos of youth begins to see shades of grey in the world.
If you apply the “everybody’s a good guy in his own head” theory to the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes, even the moderately sane ones (if anyone who does such an act can be seen as sane) you see that they do not create themselves. They are created by the society they live in. They learn their ethos from others. And they believe they are doing the right thing! In the case of almost all the recent terrorist attacks, the perpetrators have been local citizens. Forget ISIS. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Lonely Grief: Dangerous to Ourselves and Others
If we fall prey to the very human tendency to grieve alone, we can lose track of reality and the norms of society. Once we get caught up in “My grief is better than yours,” and “You couldn’t possibly understand,” we reject any solace or solutions others can provide.
If, on the other hand, we reach out to each other and acknowledge the universality of the loss, then we normalize our reactions. We see how others are reacting and take comfort and guidance from this. And thus, eventually, we can rejoin the others, and our lives can go on.
The Validity of My Point of View
So I am not insisting that my grief is somehow greater than that of someone who has no contacts in the gay community. I believe that there are certain precepts of life that are more universal than that. The use of violence against any one, be they gay, lesbian, latino, female, hadicapped or any other label is wrong, and every one of us needs to take a good look at whether our acts are in any way adding to that fire, rather than trying to put it out.
We grieve together or we break apart. Watch Great Britain next week.
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