The shooting in Orlando was a reminder, yet again, of the crazy world we live in.  We don’t seem to have world wars now, but every week in some country around the world, another lunatic commits a horrific act.  This time it was in Orlando, Florida – home to Universal studios, Disney and sadly as we discovered later in the week an estimated 1.3 million alligators.   Orlando, we read, is a city which has a surprising diversity, surprising because you normally associate diversity with bigger cities like New York or Miami and not a city of just 2 million people.  It’s an immigrant city in many respects filled with university students and only one third of the population can claim to have been there before Epcot opened in 1982.  In particular, it has a large South American population and many people from Puerto Rico.  Its diverse and not a conservative, closed society like many cities in many countries.  This is where terror struck this time but I don’t think it is clear cut terrorism all on its own.

I know the killer pledged allegiance to ISIS, but he also pledged allegiance to a rival group of ISIS, demonstrating his lack of knowledge of the group, so clearly the link is tenuous at best and most likely a cover up for a man struggling with his feelings about his own possible homosexuality.  To me this was first and foremost an attack on homosexuals and one could see that even in his father’s comments who while saying his son obviously had no reason to do this, went on to say, for no reason at all, that gay people will be judged by God.  In an instant you knew exactly where the homophobic problems had started in this house – with the father.  It’s too early to speculate now, but all the time spent on gay websites, going to gay clubs etc can’t all have just been research and we hear more and more of men who say he made “moves” on them.  This really appears to be man who struggled with his sexuality and had been brought up in a house by a father who believes clearly that God will punish all homosexuals.  One can imagine living in a house like that, with parents raging on about the issue, invoking God’s name and wrath all the time, while secretly having gay tendencies. 

This massacre in Pulse nightclub demonstrates more clearly than ever what happens when children are brought up to judge others on their race, sex or sexuality.  We in South Africa have many generations of white people, in families who swallowed the National Party apartheid propaganda, and which ultimately led to entire generations of our people being poorly educated, having nothing spent on their education and now struggling to enter the workforce.  We are, in many respects in South Africa, while our economy struggles and the crime rate is ridiculous, bearing the fruit that the parents and Grandparents of many white people planted, in terms of what they supported and who they voted for. 

Lastly, still I fail to understand why so many people, are such bored busybodies, that their sole concern in life is how other people get their sexual kicks and deciding what is “normal” and what is not and how others should conduct themselves in their private lives.  It’s such a small part of us, does it really matter what consenting adults choose to do in their private time as long as neither children nor animals are involved?  Must 49 people be executed on a night out just because some of those in the club are gay?