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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   31099 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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While I agree with you that blurring the lines to conflate all LGBT+ education efforts and the direct sexual abuse of minors is irresponsible, and likely to lead to violence if taken seriously by the wrong person, do we actually know that his motivation had anything to do with this?

As far as I know, the police haven't made public any information about his motive, so all we can do is speculate over the exact origin of his hate. Remember that the claimed motivation for the Pulse nightclub shooting was supposedly in retaliation for US airstrikes against Iraq and Syria, but the shooter, Omar Mateen, had supposedly contracted AIDs from a Latino man and frequented gay bars himself. It's not clear to me that the Pulse night club shooting can be read as a straightforward act of hate against LGBT people, versus a very messy personal drama spilling out into the rest of society. How likely is it that Aldrich's motives in the recent Colorado shooting won't be a straightforward hate crime either?

The police also haven’t made public that the “suspect,” arrested at the scene of the crime with rifle, armor, and ammo, committed the crimes at all. Or that he’s the same guy who was arrested last year for explosives, despite their matching names and ages. They have a duty not to speculate.

I think the prior for “gay club shooters hate gays” should be pretty high. I’m going to register my prediction that yes, he did in fact have an anti-gay agenda.

The gay claims about Mateen seem thoroughly disproven. Further, Pulse wasn't even his preferred target, and he seems to have not even known it was a gay nightclub.

The gay claims about Mateen seem thoroughly disproven.

Thank you for this. I'm happy to be corrected.

My overall point that OP didn't have any reason to believe that this more recent shooting in Colorado was motivated by any particular anti-gay animus still stands, though.

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