James Downs: Stop saying Omar Mateen was gay
Reports have surfaced that the Omar Mateen, the gunman who killed 49 people and injured many others, had frequented gay bars and also had used the gay male dating app, Grindr.
As Americans reel from this tragedy, we are looking for answers to rationalize why Mateen would go on this rampage. But based on the evidence we have thus far, insinuating that Mateen was gay is not only inaccurate but it also follows a disturbing historical pattern that can be traced to last massive massacre against LGBT people.
On June 24, 1973, at the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans, 32 people were killed from an arson attack on a gay bar that had been converted into a church. In the immediate wake of that massacre, the police and media began to suspect that a gay man had potentially set the fire to the bar.
Eyewitness accounts began to surface by survivors of the massacre, noting that a suspicious gay man, who was a noted hustler and had frequented the bar, got into an argument with a patron earlier that night and had been thrown out. Police suspected that he later returned to the bar and set fire to it. For months, police attempted to track him down, but their investigations provided futile.
Like that episode, claiming that Mateen was gay plays into a late-nineteenth century narrative that thought of homosexuality not as an identity but as a disorder that plagues those afflicted by it. For generations, the medical profession viewed homosexuality as an aberration and prescribed antediluvian and violent measures to cure gay people.
Throughout the 20th century, the media, pop culture and religious-right activists have propagated this logic in everything from reports of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s lust for male flesh to the plot of films like “Single White Female” and "Basic Instinct,” which draw a connection between homosexuality and crime.
Mateen may indeed have been someone who expressed interest in sex with other men — but whether or not he was gay is another conversation entirely. “Gay” is a historical category that developed at a particular moment. In the 1970s, it was a political identity that people embraced because they believed in a shared sense of community and culture. It is not simply about sexual preference or proclivity. There is a difference between identifying as gay and being a man who has sex with other men.
Implying that Mateen is gay because he may have had interest in other men takes all the bloodshed, ugliness and confusion of the Orlando massacre and reframes the conversation away from the victims and into a larger historical context that posits homosexuality as a disorder. We must resist this dangerous temptation.
so much reaching and stretching with this.
bringing up the Upstairs Lounge arson/deaths thats completely unrelated to this incident outside of gay people dying.
nikka pleaseeee if u know the govt is doing some shyt the people will protect u get outta here
Naive when it's already facts. Next time do your research. 
nikkas would participate in this for 200 dollars? 
, he's stinking up the joint with these tin foil theories 
