The families and loved ones of Orlando's victims certainly deserve the space to grieve and heal, but as Gabriel Arana writes, that space shouldn't be exploited as a haven by politicians and pundits blind to the life-and-death effects of Washington's policymaking, or lack thereof. This tragic event did, after all, fall at the political intersection of gays, guns, and god.
It is only the most privileged among us who have the luxury of divorcing politics from everyday life. Those of us in the L.G.B.T. community know better. Politics is how we won the right to be free from discrimination in government jobs, to have sex without fear of criminal prosecution, to serve in the military, to get married and adopt children. In about 28 states, we are still fighting to outlaw discrimination in employment. And transgender Americans are still fighting for the right to pee in peace.
To think that a mass shooting at a gay nightclub filled with Latinos and committed by a Muslim-American sympathetic to religious extremists is beyond the scope of politics is absurd on its face — you couldn’t dream up a scenario more rife with political implications. But it is especially absurd to those of us in the L.G.B.T. community, whose very existence has been politicized for decades. [...]
That Mr. Mateen was able to purchase a weapon of mass murder capable of shooting over 20 rounds in nine seconds — the civilian version of a military weapon — is also the product of our politics, which makes no distinction between guns that can be used for sport and self-defense and those designed to take as many lives as possible in a short amount of time. A tragedy with political causes has political solutions.
I'm not going to try to improve upon this piece. Read the whole thing.