Christians Didn’t Commit the Orlando
Massacre By David French
Omar Mateen did.
We are now fully through the looking
glass. A Muslim man walked into a gay nightclub and gunned down 49 men and
women, most of them gay or lesbian. He paused in the middle of his massacre to
call 911 and a local television station, making clear that he wanted the world
to know he had pledged allegiance to ISIS.
There are no dog whistles here. This
is a textbook example of jihadism in action, plain and simple. Yet somehow,
Omar Mateen’s massacre has put American Christians on the defensive.
Yesterday, Anderson Cooper grilled
Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, accusing her of hypocrisy for expressions
of support for slain Floridians. Why was she hypocritical? Because she opposed
same-sex marriage:
Today, the New York Times
editorialized about the domestic threat to LGBT Americans and declared that
they were “casualties of a society where hate has deep roots.”
The “society” the Times condemned
wasn’t the ISIS caliphate — it was America, and specifically states such as
Texas and North Carolina that are fighting federal edicts that demand that men
should have access to women’s restrooms.
The Times couldn’t bring itself to
condemn Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but it attacked North Carolina governor Pat
McCrory and Texas governor Greg Abbott.
Even well-meaning Christians are
adopting the secular-progressive line. In a viral Facebook post, popular writer
and speaker Jen Hatmaker declared, “We cannot with any integrity honor in death
those we failed to honor in life.”
She then proceeded to offer a
standard leftist broadside against Evangelicals, arguing that Christian
“anti-LGBTQ sentiment has paved a long runway to hate crimes.” The principles,
such as they exist, seem to be this: If you oppose same-sex marriage or
mixed-gender bathrooms, then you not only can’t legitimately grieve the loss of
gay lives, you’re partially responsible for the massacre in Orlando.
Conservative efforts to protect
religious freedom and freedom of association from unprecedented infringement
will kill people. Never mind that all the actual evidence in the case points to
Islamic motivations extrapolated from well-known and widely shared
interpretations of Shariah law, somehow those darn Baptists are to blame.
RELATED: What If the Orlando
Murderer Had Been a Christian? Does this mean that Barack Obama would have been
complicit in the massacre if it had happened four years ago, before he publicly
changed his stance on same-sex marriage?
What about Hillary Clinton? She
opposed gay marriage until 2013. Her husband signed the Defense of Marriage
Act. The Orlando shooter lived for years under Democratic administrations that
opposed same-sex marriage. I guess Bill Clinton shares some blame as well. Some
on the left simply refuse to believe what terrorists say about themselves and
about their intentions.
I don’t have the words adequate to
express my contempt for this view. Does any living, sentient being believe that
if a Christian had launched this attack, these same liberals wouldn’t blame his
religious beliefs? The so-called “reality-based community” ignores the actual
evidence in the attack — Mateen’s own loudly declared jihadist beliefs — in an
attempt to shame a community whose primary “sin” is opposing the sexual
revolution.
But there is something even more
sinister at work than garden-variety anti-Christian bigotry, aided and abetted
by gullible believers such as Hatmaker: Americans are being purposefully and
intentionally distracted from our true enemies. Once again, the jihadist threat
is being minimized.
The Orlando Debate Is Beyond Partisan — It’s
Dangerously Polarizing Some on the left simply refuse to believe what
terrorists say about themselves and about their intentions. Osama bin Laden
couldn’t have really attacked the World Trade Center in part out of a desire to
avenge Christians’ 15th-century conquest of Muslim Spain.
Iranian leaders don’t really mean
“death to America.”
Muslim nations that mandate the
death penalty or other draconian criminal punishments for homosexuality don’t
truly express the will of their people.
More Orlando Shooting The Battle of
Orlando Blogger: Talk about the Gay Community after the Orlando Shooting Erases
Bisexuals Universities Sidestep Truth on Orlando The result is bigotry running
two ways — an unreasoning, irrational hatred of American Christians and a
comprehensive denial of Muslim moral agency.
American Christians are responsible
for things they don’t believe. Sharia-observant Muslims, by contrast, aren’t
responsible for the things they do believe.
And make no mistake, said Muslims
don’t care a whit what the New York Times, Anderson Cooper, Jen Hatmaker, or
any other anti-Evangelical terror apologist has to say. To them, one American
life taken is as good as any other. They will attack again, maybe at another
gay bar, or another office Christmas party, or a coffee house, or a sporting
event, or a church.
And when they do, there will surely
be some Americans who excuse their actions out of eagerness to blame other
Americans, instead.
— David French is an attorney, and a
staff writer at National Review.
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