6.16.16 Editor’s Desk

6.16.16 Editor’s Desk
Billy Manes
Billy Manes

I’m not personally sure if we’ll ever divine the motives here, and as the onion skin peels, we may find out things we don’t want to hear: that our community can be divided in the strangest ways, that homophobia is a real thing, that this is a backlash to us getting our freedoms during last year’s gay marriage ruling.

It was the rudest of awakenings. At 5 a.m. on June 12, as my husband Tony Mauss was preparing to exit for his job, tie and hairnet in place, that I got a tap on the shoulder while half-awake in bed. “Don’t look at your phone,” he said. All internal histrionics aside, this is the kind of warning that one typically reads in reverse, as in, “do look at your phone, dear.” So I did. And I wept for people, acquaintances, lovers of life who were being held hostage in a bathroom or a backroom or curled up in balls on the floor of Pulse pretending to be dead. And I was set into motion, a continuous motion that we at Watermark are still rolling through to the bitter end of this production cycle today.

There are many things to be said about the incident early Sunday morning, and many of those things are misleading. Did the shooter get “triggered” by seeing two men kissing on Miami Beach, was he a queer social networker who frequented Pulse, was it a hate crime against the gay and Latino communities (the incident occurred on Latin Night)? I’m not personally sure if we’ll ever divine the motives here, and as the onion skin peels, we may find out things we don’t want to hear: that our community can be divided in the strangest ways, that homophobia is a real thing, that this is a backlash to us getting our freedoms during last year’s gay marriage ruling. There have been many narratives elucidated in the numerous international media interviews Watermark has been part of, and I’ve been quick to cut them off. We don’t know yet. We’re still recovering. This is a living nightmare.

There are many personal things that I want to say about this tragedy, as most of the facts (as known) will be covered in our main feature. I want to say, peripherally, that we have a culture of terror that lives right beneath our collective conscience, that assault rifles are dangerous in anybody’s hands, that we can no longer ignore how explosive our gun lobby is, that we cannot ignore the fact that, even if this guy (who I won’t name here) was gay or a “regular of Pulse,” this was one of the largest massacres – hate crimes – in U.S. history, barring war and 9/11.

There is a press camp outside of Pulse right now. I spent the better part of yesterday in the sweltering heat being pulled from microphone to microphone. That was when the feeling of crisis set in for me. Imagine how it feels for those who were in the building on that late Saturday night enduring the slaughter and breaking out walls. This is not anything that this community should have to endure. This is not human.

One year ago this week, I started as editor of Watermark. It happened to be the week that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality nationwide. We knew there would be a backlash; we’ve felt it in smaller slaps over the year: workplace equality, trans deaths. We know that this battle is not over. And, by the events of June 12, we know that it is nowhere close to being won. Hate reigns supreme.

But so does love. For the thousands of people who gathered outside of the Dr. Phillips Center for the candlelight vigil on June 13, I say thank you. For those most closely affected by this tragedy, I drape you in my concern and love. This unfathomable incident will never be repeated in Orlando, not as long as I can jump in front of whomever is perpetrating it and sacrifice myself for others. I, frankly, am so sickened by what I have heard that it’s hard to get out of bed, even with my husband telling me it’s going to be OK.

We’ll move through this. Watermark is in war-room mode right now, chins up. Also, expect continued coverage in forthcoming issues. This memorial edition is for the victims of a senseless crime and those who believe in justice. As the cover says, “You cannot silence us. You cannot destroy us. We are not going anywhere.”

Hope and peace to the entirety of our LGBT community. We’re crying right there with you. We love you.

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