Supporters of gay rights usually look to the Left as their political sponsor and supporter, as the political faction they can count on to back them up when it matters. They had better take a closer look at the Left’s reaction to the terrorist attack at that gay nightclub in Orlando, because it shows how badly the Left is failing them.
The role of Islam in the attack is very clear. The perpetrator was the son of an Afghan Muslim immigrant who is a supporter of the Taliban. During the attack, the shooter called police to pledge allegiance to the Islamic State. So his motive is not exactly the big mystery some people are pretending it is.
It also seems likely that he was himself gay and had frequented the Pulse nightclub over a period of years, not just casing it to plan his attack, but as a regular customer. Certainly, a gay nightclub in Orlando is not the kind of target likely to be suggested by Islamic State leadership back in Syria. They would be more likely to suggest someplace with a more international profile like Disney World, which the shooter did scout. But Pulse is the kind of target the shooter picked because it has personal meaning for him.
These two motives are by no means mutually exclusive. Islam has a warped view of human sexuality, particularly in its primitive Afghan variety. (Afghanistan is a place where homosexuality has been punished by death—but pederasty is widely tolerated.) So it’s no surprise that a young Muslim from an Afghan background might find himself attracted to men, yet also feel intensely guilty about. And it’s no surprise that he would seek to atone for this supposed sin by seeking the “martyrdom” of dying in the cause of jihad. Islamist recruiters have a keen eye for just this sort of thing. The first female suicide bomber for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas reportedly did it to atone for adultery.
Given the obvious role of Islam, what have the great defenders of the gay cause on the Left done? Totally ignored it and tried to shift the focus to something else. They’ve attempted to shift our attention away from an actual, serious threat to the freedom and personal security of gay people and onto their own preferred, pre-programmed domestic political agenda. So they have attempted to blame the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle (which was not actually used by the shooter) and, even more bizarrely, Christians.
This is nicely summed up in a little graphic passing around on Twitter to illustrate Poe’s Law, the Internet adage about how it’s impossible to tell the difference between satire of a belief and the sincere expression of it. On the Left are tweets from “Godfrey Elfwick,” a parody accounting representing the views of a stereotypical leftist “Social Justice Warrior.” On the right are tweets from an actual stereotypical Social Justice Warrior, CNN talking head Sally Kohn.
The idea, I guess, is that Kohn thinks a radical Islamist needed to learn from American Christians how to hate homosexuals—despite the fact that the death penalty for homosexuality is widely preached and practiced in the Muslim world.
So the Left will gladly protect homosexuals from the very great threat of having Christians refuse to bake cakes for their weddings. But when homosexuals are attacked by Muslims who think they should be put to death merely for existing, the Left will cover its ears and eyes and deny the threat even exists.
This is what they call a “teachable moment” for American homosexuals. They have been sold on the idea of a kind of pan-leftist alliance in which all of the different victim groups band together to fight their common oppressors. But the interests of some supposed victim groups trump the interests of others. In a contest between “homophobia” and “Islamophobia,” it turns out that the Left is more concerned with avoiding any accusation that it might be hostile to Islam.
This is just one example of the con the Left has pulled on all minority groups. It presents itself as the protector of their rights and interests, but it is actually just using them for its own agenda. The Left starts with a pre-existing animus against capitalism and Western civilization. The point of its supposed alliance of the oppressed is not to actually protect their interests but to assemble an army of malcontents to tear down the existing system. And when it becomes convenient to do so, it will sacrifice them to that agenda. From the <i>Charlie Hebdo</i> massacre to Orlando, it’s as if the Islamists have been ticking down a list of traditional liberal client groups — artists, Jews, women, gays — and attacking them, only to be met with the left’s stubborn denial and indifference.
This is not perhaps the easiest time to make this point, when the Republican Party seems determined to drive away anyone who is a member of any kind of minority. All that stuff about “outreach” that we were talking about after the 2012 election has, for the moment, been thrown into the ditch. But the underlying problem — the Left’s exploitation of minorities for its own end — has not changed, and the reaction to the Orlando shooting is a good opportunity to suggest to the victims of the Left’s minority con that perhaps they should not consent to be exploited for somebody else’s agenda.
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