![]() Rocks are printed with words of encouragement outside the Pulse night club following the shootings earlier this year in Orlando, Florida, U.S., September 17, 2016. There was a more deliberate and specific reaching out to the LGBTQ community,” he said. ![]() The massacre “really forced us to think as a spiritual community in ways that many hadn’t thought before. Three days after it happened, the council held an interfaith prayer service that included a broad cross-section of beliefs. Pastor James Coffin, the executive director of the Interfaith Council of Central Florida, helped coordinate religious counselors in the days following the shooting. After the shooting, “We a lot of churches and communities of faith take action to learn about the LGBTQ community,” said Hannah Willard, the public policy director for advocacy group Equality Florida. ![]() Some faith leaders say the shooting galvanized them to form closer connections with LGBTQ people. “Sadly, it is religion, including our own, which targets, mostly verbally, and also often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people,” Lynch wrote, according to Reuters. Petersburg, Florida, said in a blog post after the shooting that religious rhetoric can marginalize LGBTQ people. Bishop Robert Lynch of the Catholic diocese in St. Meanwhile, Christian faith leaders in the area wrestled with their own relationships with the LGBTQ community. “I wanted to search my heart to see if I had, in any way, been complicit in that kind of prejudice, even violence.” - Rev. In the following days, the community rallied to support the survivors and victims: raising millions of dollars on GoFundMe, mobilizing to improve access to mental health services in Florida and making a strong push to stop bullying against LGBTQ kids in school. The attack was the largest mass shooting in American history. At about 5:14 a.m., police barreled through a wall of a bathroom in the club, fatally shooting Mateen in an eruption of gunfire. It has been a year since that night, when a lone gunman began firing on a mass of party-goers at Pulse during a Latin-themed event.įor the next three hours, Omar Mateen, armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a pistol, kept the authorities at bay, spreading bloodshed throughout an establishment that many LGBTQ people of color described as a safe haven, a place to turn for comfort and support. Pulse ‘forced us to think as a spiritual community’ They may not have ever really seen it from the perspective of a queer trans person.”Ĭhristopher Cuevas, far left, and other members of QLatinx appear at AIDS Walk Orlando on April 15, 2017. ![]() “I think for many of the people in attendance, it was an eye-opening experience to them. “I was very honest and raw about my experience,” Cuevas said of his speech at the event. Now they say the last year has brought new dialogue between them, just one of the ways the community has changed in the wake of the tragedy. He was nervous as he prepared to tell the crowd about grappling with his Catholic upbringing as a young queer person.īut when he told his story, he said he felt “warmly received” by the mix of people who had come together to heal in the year afterward, in what LGBTQ advocates and faith leaders alike call a shift in their relationships. Christopher Cuevas knew what he wanted to say as he approached the First United Methodist Church of Orlando on June 6, nearly a year after a horrific shooting at the popular gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando.Ĭuevas planned to speak at the meeting of ministers, LGBTQ people and other residents gathered at the church to remember the victims of the shooting.
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