I’ll be honest, from the time this story emerged I questioned the prevailing narrative. An Islamic terrorist attacking a gay nightclub leaving killing 53 club-goers wounded and 49 dead didn’t sit right with me. Sure, the killer, Omar Mateen, 29, had an Arabic-sounding name, but it was too easy. Mass shooting? A guy with a funny Arabic-sounding name? Too easy. Too convenient, and too conspiratorial.
Hell, at the time, for all I knew Mateen was a wannabe stick-up-kid like “Omar Little” on The Wire. Which is ironic, because, the character on The Wire was a gay black man. So, for all I knew, Mateen was simply projecting his inner homo-thug and not attempting to be an inductee in the Jihadist Hall of Fame.
Having said that, now there are reports that Mateen actually frequented the Pulse nightclub. According to the Orlando Sentinel, at least four witnesses have said that Mateen frequently attended parties at Pulse.
“Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent,” Ty Smith told the local newspaper. “We didn’t really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times. He told us he had a wife and child.”
In another report with the Palm Beach Post, Chris Callen recalled Mateen being escorted drunk from the Pulse nightclub on multiple occasions, including an incident where Mateen pointed a knife at a friend. Callen, who performs under the name Kristina McLaughlin at the club said, “He’s been going to this bar for at least three years.”
Then there’s this:
A former classmate of Omar Mateen’s 2006 police academy class said he believed Mateen was gay, saying Mateen once asked him out.
[…] The classmate said that he, Mateen and other classmates would hang out, sometimes going to gay nightclubs, after classes at the Indian River Community College police academy. He said Mateen asked him out romantically.
“We went to a few gay bars with him, and I was not out at the time, so I declined his offer,” the former classmate said. He asked that his name not be used.
He believed Mateen was gay, but not open about it. Mateen was awkward, and for a while the classmate and the rest in the group of friends felt sorry for him.
“He just wanted to fit in and no one liked him,” he said. “He was always socially awkward.”
From where I’m sitting, Omar Mateen was a sexually repressed closeted gay man with an Arabic name and brown skin, fighting against his true self in a heck of a sexual identity crisis. This, I believe, led to a life of mental turmoil as it would anyone who is (and once was) in the closet about their sexual identity.
You can choose to believe the narrative that suggests that Omar Mateen was, at best, an ISIS operative, or at least, an ISIS sympathizer. The problem with that is that per the FBI investigators, to date, Mateen claimed to be down with several jihadists groups who are at odds with each other.
Now, maybe it’s because I’m black and that common sense has nothing to do with it, but, err… um, you can’t be a member of the Bloods and Crips at the same time. So, quite naturally, anyone who says that they are, like Mateen who claims to have ties with al-Queada, Hezbollah, and ISIS all at the same time, are simply full of shit.
But What About The 911 Call?
Omar Mateen was trolling everybody when he made that 911 call and pledged his support to ISIS. Sadly, a lot of people fell for it with the help of the media. Mateen was not a “terrorist” in the traditional sense. He wasn’t a Jihadist. He was simply a sexually repressed man who happened to be Muslim with an Arabic name who liked men; who, for whatever reason, couldn’t get any ass. Mateen was like that guy, Elliot Rodger, the frustrated virgin in his twenties who killed seven women in random drive-by shootings at UC Santa Barbara back in 2014. Remember him? He even wrote a manifesto and left it behind for us to read.
He couldn’t get any ass either.
To me, his beef with gay people which ultimately resulted in a tragedy was an internal beef with himself. And, it was to the extent that he refused to compromise his sexuality by dialing 911 and pledging his support to ISIS. As conflicted as he was, I think the 911 call gave cover to his true motivation and shielded his relatives from the truth.
Essentially, with one phone call to 911, Mateen was trolling the world in attempting to hide from the shame of being gay. Unfortunately, many people – including ISIS – actually fell for it.
Omar Mateen’s Selfies Told It All
I’m sorry, but Islamic terrorists don’t take selfies. The number of selfies this guy took was a red flag for me very early. Oh yeah, and we now know that he had profiles on gay dating apps. Yep, who didn’t see that coming? Once ISIS finds out that Mateen was gay, they’ll be like: “Nah dawg, we can’t fuck with you like that. We gon’ need them seventy-two virgins back, my gee. Them bitches are for real niggas and not fuck-boys.”
But hey, keep believing the narrative circulating in the echo chamber of stupid because your American patriotism and Christian religion won’t allow you to like members of the LGBT community and Muslims.