There was a very odd contrast going on for a number of days last week. First, 49 people were killed at the "Pulse" nightclub. Then a young boy was killed by an alligator in Disney World. It was a double whammy of pain and grief for Orlando. Watching the coverage and listening to the commentators and conversations going on around the pair of events, I felt an undercurrent.
Anyone read "Mad Magazine" growing up? Anyone a fan of "Spy vs. Spy", the character in white versus the character in black blowing one another up? I had a sense of that in the aftermath of Orlando.
Maybe I am being overly sensitive to the whole matter, but there seemed to be a sense out there that the life of one boy killed in Disney was on par with 49 killed in the nightclub. Maybe it was an attempt to move the hate crimes of killing homosexuals off the front burner with something-anything else. The tragic circumstances of the death of a toddler in one of the most famous places on earth, could that have been a coincidence to be exploited to take eyes off the issue of tragedy and homosexuality?
I type that out, repeat the phrase out loud to myself, and I feel like a conspiracy theorist. This seems beyond consideration. Tragedy is tragedy. The nightclub massacre and the death of the toddler are both going to result in grief and emotional destruction for their families. 49 versus 1? Do we even make such numeric comparisons in the measure of tragedy? Can it be?
I do not know. But in the aftermath of the "Pulse" massacre, hearing stories of clergy who refused to carry out funerals for the fallen, hearing stories of certain types of Christians who will go so far as to protest at those funerals, hearing-if not outright approval-certainly approbation that the justice of God has been carried out by the hands of an insane shooter.
But, as always, time moves forward and news slips into the past. The stories will come off the front page, off the lead for the nightly news, fading from memory and consideration. What shall we learn? What shall we consider? What shall we do to prevent this from happening again?
When we pose those questions, will people think more quickly of Disney? Or of the "Pulse"?
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