Want Help the LGBT Community? Give Them Some Basic Rights

The massacre of 49 people at a gay club in Orlando—a hate crime—has once again thrust debates about the reach of Islamic extremism and gun control into the public consciousness. Mass murders, especially ones executed by a wife-beating, jihadism-inspired executioner wielding an AR-15, tend to do that. A discursive spark, both in Congress and along Main Streets in America about who should be able to buy guns here, and which types of weapons they can buy, along with working to understand and protect innocent people from future rampages, is a good thing.

But let’s make no mistake about it: Gay people were the target of Omar Mateen’s brutality. Therefore, our conversations must go further than gun control and nation protecting. Ideally, they will cast bright shining lights onto the LGBT community—you know, the people in your family, your friends, your neighbors, or that woman on TV that makes you laugh—who still, despite their status as human beings and American citizens, are not afforded equal rights and protections under law.

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