(Thanks to David Flanders for this one)
THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
(apologies to Keith Olbermann)
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)
My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Orlando and everyone who was impacted by last night's senseless attack.
— Pete Sessions (@PeteSessions) June 12, 2016
Asked Rules Chair Sessions if Orlando shooting changes calculation on LGBT Maloney amdmt. He argued Pulse was not a gay club.
— Daniel Newhauser (@dnewhauser) June 14, 2016
“It was a young person’s nightclub, I’m told. And there were some [LGBT ppl] there, but it was mostly Latinos” https://t.co/c5qvdSk0kF
— Daniel Newhauser (@dnewhauser) June 14, 2016
In the immediate aftermath of the Orlando shooting, many Republicans leaders offered their thoughts, prayers, and sympathies to the victims, but neglected to mention that the gay community had been targeted. One of those Republicans has since taken the step of actually denying that the gay community was targeted — and then he blocked a bill that would have protected them from discrimination…. Before the committee’s meeting on Tuesday, Daniel Newhauser of the National Journal asked Sessions what impact the Orlando shooting would have on how the amendment proceeds. Sessions rejected the idea that it would have any impact, openly denying that Pulse was a gay nightclub[.]
It takes a special kind of mean-spirited, dickish ideologue to be Pete Sessions. To claim the LGBT community wasn’t the target of the massacre committed by Omar Mateen at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub is nothing short of monstrous and horribly insensitive. Then again, it appears Rep. Sessions is exactly that sort of mean-spirited, dickish ideologue who hates homosexuality and everything about it so much that he’d deny what’s widely accepted as patently obvious.
Hey, it’s not like gays are really people or anything…right??
Whether via sheer ignorance, astonishing arrogance, raging homophobia, the willful suspension of disbelief, and/or combinations of the former, Rep. Sessions has demonstrated his worthiness to be acclaimed The Worst Person in the World ©. Even his Republican colleagues declined to support Session’s monstrous, ill-considered response to what can only fairly be described as utter, abject tragedy.
Rep. Sessions is the same Congressman heavily invested in having magic declared a “national treasure.” Yes, you read that correctly, the Congressman from East Bumfuck, TX, having apparently resolved all other pressing problems faced by this country, is determined to advance the cause of magic. He’s also the same person who only recently admitted that Republicans won’t be able to overturn ObamaCare. Of course, denying the validity of the LGBT community and their concerns is merely what good Christian patriots do.
Sadly, Rep. Sessions is so anti-LGBT that he can’t be bothered to recognize their existence, even when they’re slaughtered by the dozens at what no reasonable person would deny was a gay nightclub. It was a place where those in the LGBT community should have been able to feel safe. That innocent human beings who happened to be gay were murdered seems of little concern to Sessions.
On its website, the club calls itself “Orlando’s hottest gay bar located in the heart of downtown.” The website also describes the club as a “premier gay night club.”
The club was founded in memory of a man who died of AIDS, according to the website. Barbara Poma, one of the founders and owners of Pulse, started the club in memory of her brother.
Poma and her co-founder wanted the place to have an “atmosphere that embraced the gay lifestyle” and to be more than “just another gay club,” according to the website.
Pulse was a place where those who’ve struggled for acceptance in wider society could be themselves around people who shared similar struggles. Even if only for a little while, people who fell somewhere on the LGBT spectrum could be themselves with people who understood, loved, and cared for them. That sense of security was shattered over three hours on a Sunday morning.
What happened in Orlando was much worse than this country’s worst mass shooting. It was an attack on a community’s sense of peace and security. That Rep. Sessions could see his way clear to denying that this atrocity was an attack on the LGBT community is as disrespectful as it is monstrous.
