For the day, at least, one Orlando blood bank lifted the ban on gay male donors. The blood banks needed blood: O positive, O negative, AB plasma.
It was the largest mass shooting in the history of America. This weekend’s attack was not only the most devastating attack in the history of the LGBT community. You just have to be a Parisian going to see a concert, or a Belgian trying to get to the airport, or an Iraqi trying to go to a soccer game. The Islamic State has proven that you don’t have to be gay to offend them, you just have to be not-Islamic State. “If you talk to people here, they would say this is lesbian-and-gay specific,” said Mark O’Dudum, an airline technician in San Francisco. Minority groups will always get persecuted.” “I remember going back to the 1970s,” said Mikel Rosen, a local fashion consultant walking through the neighborhood. Two thousand, eight hundred and ninety-one miles from Orlando, placards and flowers had gathered in memorials in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. In Detroit, volunteers at Motor City Pride put up a banner: “Our hearts are with Orlando.” In Washington, D.C., organizers of the Capital Pride Festival prepared a statement of solidarity to be read from that festival’s main stage before the day’s events launched, before a planned performance by a gay men’s chorus.
So would the Boston Pride Festival, its organizers announced. One thousand, seven hundred and thirty miles from Orlando, the Albuquerque Pride festival, which had commenced the day before, announced via Facebook that they would be holding a moment of silence, at 2:02 p.m., twelve hours after the shootings began. Jeffery Greamo, left, and Jon Paul join in a moment of silence for the victims of the mass shooting during a Pride Month block party in Boston on June 12. They brought cookies, sandwiches and potato chips, and sat together and cried. Three miles from Pulse in Orlando, people spent Sunday morning streaming into the Center, an LGBT nonprofit organization and gathering spot. Several of the identified bodies were never claimed, according to news accounts, because families were too ashamed that their relatives had been found in a place for gay men. It was a Pride Weekend at the time of the New Orleans attack, too. The Orlando shootings came 2½ years after a Seattle man tried to burn down a gay club with 750 people inside and nearly 16 years after a Roanoke, Va., man went into a gay bar with a gun and opened fire and 43 years - on June 24 - after 32 people were burned to death at New Orleans’s UpStairs lounge. I’m not surprised something horrible has happened, but I’m surprised at how horrible it is.”įor several years, June has been known nationally as LGBT Pride Month, with dozens of cities hosting parades and festivals to celebrate gay and lesbian heritage. There’s so much hatred directed toward our community, from candidates, from religious fanatics. “To know that a mass shooting - to know it happened in a place where we as a community go to feel comfortable and be ourselves? I knew there would be a backlash against the strides we’ve made. “I’m struggling to find the words,” says Jim Obergefell, the Ohio plaintiff whose name became the symbol for gay rights when the validity of his own marriage was upheld by the highest court in the land. Pride on Sunday, the LGBTQ community expresses sorrow and stands in support with the victims of the deadly mass shooting that took place at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.