Politics

Virginia Congressman Blames Homophobic Americans For Orlando

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Jonah Bennett Contributor
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Democratic Rep. Don Beyer shocked and angered his Virginia constituents Monday after he blamed those who don’t respect progressive narratives on gender and sex as partially responsible for the Orlando terrorist attack.

“We are horrified that one man targeted LGBT victims at two a.m. on an Orlando Sunday morning,” Beyer said in a press release Monday. “But we are not blameless, when we tell government contractors it is okay to discriminate against someone because they are gay or lesbian – or tell transgender school children that we will not respect their gender identity.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation spoke to Beyer Monday to get further clarification on his statement.

“I wasn’t just suggesting one to one equivalence,” Beyer told TheDCNF. “Obviously there’s a huge difference of scope and scale. There is a long continuum, from saying gay jokes to ‘you can’t work here because you’re gay,’ to ‘you can’t live here because you’re lesbian,’ all the way to somebody saying, ‘you know I’m going to act out my radical Islamic terror on a bunch of innocent gay people in the middle of the night.'”

“I’m sure it’s a long way from saying ‘let’s discriminate against gays in the workplace’ to Orlando,” he added. “But there is a long continuum.”

If someone, for example, makes a homophobic remark, they are “in the smallest sense” responsible for what happened in Orlando,” Beyer told TheDCNF.

“Let’s also recognize that even in the little things we do, we are responsible,” he said.

Beyer’s first priority following the terror attack is to focus on gun control. He argues the Founding Fathers simply did not anticipate the existence of “military grade automatic weapons” when enshrining the right to keep and bear arms. Assault weapons, he argued, must be banned first and foremost.

Secondly, law enforcement must target Islamic extremism because it has carved out a space for mentally disturbed individuals to commit acts of terror that tarnish the otherwise “historic, peaceful religion” of Islam, according to Beyer.

Omar Mateen, the Orlando terrorist, used a Sig Sauer MCX carbine and a handgun to kill 49 people and seriously injure 53 others at the Pulse nightclub Sunday morning. He was taken out by law enforcement in a gun battle. Omar Mateen is a registered Democrat. Interestingly, there are also reports that Mateen was a regular at Pulse for several years and even corresponded with one of the club-goers via an app for gay hookups for a year.

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