Dan Savage appeared on All In with Chris Hayes last night in the wake of the Orlando shooting and was asked about several aspects of what has happened in the days following – namely, the way Donald Trump has tried to take advantage of the situation for his own political benefit, and the news that the shooter may have been a gay man.
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Said Hayes: “You know, Trump unveiled this new line of attack in the speech the other day, which is basically almost an importation of a certain kind of European right-wing politics. We saw it with Pim Fortuyn who was a Dutch politician. Basically saying, I am an ally of LGBT people because I will be the most anti-Muslim candidate, essentially. What’s your reaction to watching him try to essentially pit these two constituencies against each other?”
Replied Savage:
“We’re not going to fall for it. And you can’t draw a clean line between the LGBT community and the Muslim community because there are LGBT Muslims in the United States and all over the world. Muslims are a part of the LGBT community, not distinct from it. LGBT people come from all races, all faiths, all ethnic backgrounds, all classes. And Donald Trump attempting to pit the queer community against the Muslim community is not going to fly. We don’t believe him. Donald Trump has pledged to undo marriage equality. Donald Trump is the enemy of the LGBT community just as he is the enemy of the Muslim community. And beating up on what is, in the United States, a vulnerable minority group isn’t the way that you impress other members of other vulnerable minority groups to win their support.”
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When asked about the potential that Omar Mateen was a gay man, Savage replied:
“Self-loathing violent closet case and radicalized religious extremist are not mutually exclusive categories. There are a lot of self-loathing queer people out there. Most of them are self-loathing because of religion, because of the zap religion put on their heads. So he could be both of those things.”
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