Je suis gay. (English Version)

It is typical of terror attacks that they hit people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Orlando that was different. The people were at the right place, exactly where they wanted to be. And that was exactly why they became victims.

The attack, a fact which is not currently completely understood in the German media, is not just „only“ a terror attack against as many people as possible, but at the same time also a hate crime against a specific group.

The same was the case at Charlie Hebdo. The target was people who embody something that is particularly important for peaceful societies, and therefore is particularly worth defending. Accordingly, after Charlie Hebdo, the western world felt itself particularly connected to, and indebted to, the cause that had been attacked. We were Charlie, we were freedom of expression.

The Orlando attack, as is being constantly calculated for us, was the second largest terror attack in the USA and one of the largest attacks with firearms.

But nobody has done the calculations to tell us that it was the how-many-eth largest attack on LGBTI people. And yet it was that above all else: an attack on LGBTI people. And it is therefore, and only therefore, that it is also an attack on America and the free world, because an attack on LGBTI people (exactly the same as the attack on Charlie Hebdo) terrorises something that must be important to all of us. And that we – whether homo, bi or hetero – therefore must defend.

The freedom to be the person we want to be. The freedom to love who we love.

If in this situation the free world would like to be more certain of its valued freedom, then it must also acknowledge:

Je suis gay! ♦

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Translated by Nollendorfblog-Reader Stephen Jones. Thank you! Danke!