The gay community is in denial about Islamism

It is almost two months since Omar Mateen walked around the Pulse nightclub in Florida, gunning people down while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’.  During the assault Mateen spoke to American law enforcement and swore allegiance to Isis.  Frustratingly Omar Mateen failed to call the group ‘so-called Islamic State’, thus betraying a woeful lack of linguistic sensitivity among his other crimes.

A few days later, very much in the shadow of these events, there was a ‘gay pride’ parade in New York.  The huge banner leading the parade at the front read ‘Republican hate kills’.  That is because after a moment’s stunned surprise the American gay rights movement did what all other Western gay rights movements have done, and decided to assiduously duck the issue of Islamic homophobia.  Having spent so many years believing that there was nothing more hateful than a Republican, when someone shouting praise to Allah and swearing allegiance to Islamic State killed 49 gay people America’s gay movement didn’t even bother to commission a new rainbow banner.

As I wrote at the time, although the Western gay press has understandable historical qualms about Christianity it also has a history of dismissing any and all concerns about Islam.  So in the wake of Orlando the gay press was filled not with pieces warning gay people about Islamic gay-hate, but pieces going out of their way to warn people against linking the massacre to Islam or Muslims.  In particular there was a flurry of articles warning gay people not to become ‘haters’.  Which is only the gay version of a wider Western sickness.  You got attacked?  Be careful you don’t become a bigot now.

At the weekend I picked up a copy of the UK gay magazine Attitude – a sort of post-Orlando memorial edition – which showed nothing had changed.