Dear Editor,

Many, including President Barack Obama, have failed to call a spade a spade in the aftermath of the Orlando gay nightclub mass shooting, and seemingly deliberately.

Obama referred to Omar Mateen, the deceased shooter, as having been “disturbed”, but with all due respect to psychotic patients, the man was a psycho.

Understandably, commentators and officials have to be cautious with assigning blame and labels because of how fragile the case and those relevant to it are, but it is also important that they do not confuse others, like myself, lest we, too, become victims of opportunistic “alligator tears” or be drawn to self-fulfil the claim that we are imminent perpetrators.

An actual “disturbed” person was like me, who, while in college, experienced an attempted physical pass on me by a gay man. In contrast to that Orlando gunman, I did not have any inclination to kill anybody, but I did feel like I wanted to vomit; and because I do not wish nausea on myself, or even worse, I simply stay away from gays, especially the indiscreet ones. Mateen should have done the same.

Like Mateen, there are those who are bent on getting rid of their “problem” rather than avoiding it at its various levels. Furthermore, there are so many points of conflict in our increasingly integrating societies that lasting and complete peace seems unachievable.

We have gays and homophobes, pro-abortion and pro-life, dogmatic Muslims and Christians, racist whites and coloureds, classism and conflicting ideologies. What is worse, and perhaps is the root of the problem, are intra-personal conflicts; skin bleaching comes to mind. Hatred of self and others is being disguised as love; the love for self, for one’s beliefs, and even for God. Even divine intervention, which has actually always been viewed by many as being divine “interference”, would find this situation very challenging.

Andre O Sheppy

Norwood, St James

astrangely@outlook.com