Sunday morning’s attack didn’t just cut short dozens of lives it also tore a hole in the very fragile sense of security for gay people in America. They are - or were until Sunday morning perceived as - the ultimate “safe space” for queer people. For decades, gay bars have functioned not merely as watering holes but as gathering places and de facto community centers.
But the detail of it having happened not just to gay people (by a gunman whose father has spoken out about his son’s dislike of gay men) but at a gay bar cuts to the very heart of a marginalized group’s fears. The worst mass shooting in American history is almost unfathomable in all of its particulars. If the gunman who shot and killed 50 people in an attack on the Orlando gay nightclub Pulse sought not merely to end life but to sow terror in the LGBT community, he couldn’t have chosen a more apt target.
