I was invited to speak at one of Orlando's largest and most progressive employers, Lockheed Martin for their ERG PRIDE Month. Despite the heinous violence our community was enduring this week, it was decided to proceed. As I was leaving I was handed this powerful letter written by David Tod Boudreaux.
An Open Letter to The Pulse Shooter
It is not much more than 72 hours since you walked into Pulse Orlando and opened fire. You took 49 young lives right in front of us - in our backyard. People who were playing, laughing, and loving. People who had so much to offer the world - to you.
Omar, you don't know this, but the painful irony of your actions is that the people you gunned down would have invited you into our world and called you friend if you had let them. They would have played, laughed, and loved with you. That you and others like you couldn't see that is perhaps the most tragic aspect of this event. But we move on.
Perhaps you were trying to instill fear in us, but you failed. We will not fear. Did you think the GLBT community would capitulate? You picked the wrong community for that. We have faced the hate as a community that eroded your soul for as long as we have been on this earth - much longer than you. We have learned that your hatred does not define us.
We define ourselves, and long before ISIS and your skewed worldview became prolific, we chose to carry the banner of love. That can never be taken away. You should know - you tried. I only wish you had lived to see how miserably you failed. We are the GLBT community. We do not run. We do not cower. We do not break. You may have taken 49 lives and injured so many more who are fighting for their lives at this very moment in our hospitals... but their ambition, their spirit, their love will, as it always has, live on in all of us. We will be stronger for it - for them.
If you thought you could teach us a lesson, you were wrong. There is no lesson in this that we have not already learned. We are a community that has been forged in fire. We choose love always as our response.
Perhaps you were trying to stoke the flames of war - create such animosity toward your cause that we would lash out and exacerbate the global crisis that continues to plague humankind, but you failed. Do you think we will cry out against Islam? Against Afghanistan?
The thing about us is that we are not an ethnic, religious, or political group - we are everyone. We are Islamic, so you can't make us hate Islam. We are Afghan, so you can't make us hate your home. We are Jewish, and Buddhist, and black, and white, and Latino. We are European and Asian, we are Christian and atheist. We are your brothers and sisters, even if you don't know us. We are mothers and fathers. We are sons and daughters. We are everywhere - from every walk of life that humanity has created. We are here to stay, and we will not hate. We are too busy loving. Loving each other, loving those who are gone, and finding within ourselves the courage to love even those like you.
You see, we know from personal experience that hate will destroy us and love will save us. You simply cannot erase that fact with an assault rifle, and we will not acquiesce to your demands. We will show the world what it means to love.
I wish you could have seen the world stand still and bow their heads in prayer for our well-being. I wish you had seen the thousands of our neighbors who stood in line for hours to give their own blood to help your victims. I wish you had seen the very humanity you attempted to snuff out, overflowing from every corner of The City Beautiful, this great state, and our beloved country. I wish you had seen our nation - your nation - get it right in the wake of your sad, misguided acts.
As early as a decade ago I cannot say that I am sure we would have seen the same reaction to what you did, but you didn't kill 49 young men and women a decade ago, you did it now - and America has come so very far. Our allies, our friends, outside the community who support us, encourage us, love us - they stepped up, too. They didn't let this be an attack on the GLBT community, they acknowledged that this was an attack on us all. You see we are a part of them as they are a part of us. We are One Orlando, One America, One Community.
Just a day after your rampage, and where are we? Yes, you will find some of us still with tear-stained faces. You will find some of us still trying to make sense of what seems like a changed world. You will find some of us are gone. And you will find the rest of us holding them always in our hearts, running with their banner, and never ever letting hate prevail over the love in which we have fought our entire lives to live. You picked the wrong target. While you may have wounded us, we respond with love and action.
For ourselves, for our friends who became your victims, for future generations, for humanity.
Saint Francis of Assisi said "All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle." You tried, but the destruction you brought only fired up more candles shining bright across this world.
We stand in solidarity. We are gay. We are lesbian. We are bisexual. We are transgender. We are straight. We are all the people who have ever had to fight for love and acceptance. We are allies. We are Pulse. We are Orlando. We are America. We are humanity. We are love. And we will win.
May you rest in more peace than you found in life, and may the families and friends of your victims find solace and comfort in the outpouring of love from the entire human race.