Editorial: Recognize Orlando was gay hate crime too

A crowded gay nightclub on a Saturday night; an angry, unstable man with powerful weaponry; and an unprovoked and unspeakable horror that snuffed out the lives of so many innocents and wrecked the lives of so many others.

That the rampage is linked in one way or another to the War on Terror. there is little doubt.

The shooter appears to have been a domestic lone wolf, but whether he was a zealot or simply a violent man in search of a cause or justification is still unclear. Whether others were aware of or involved in his plot is a matter still under investigation, too.

So clearly, it was an act of terror. But significantly, it also was a hate crime.

The location the killer chose for his rampage was no accident. Whether out of bigotry or a repressed identity or both, the killer targeted gay victims, and that hate crime must be acknowledged.

It must be acknowledged partially for all Americans to offer the comfort and support that the LGBT community both needs and deserves in this hour of fear and heartache.

The toll made this the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. It also made it the deadliest hate crime against the gay community in U.S. history.

Human rights activist Stuart Milk, nephew of iconic gay rights leader Harvey Milk, told MSNBC that "June 12 will live forever as one of the darkest days in the LGBT community."

Orlando activist Rob Domenico added that emotions in the city's gay community are "absolute devastation."

That's an apt description of the impact on the gay community everywhere, not just in Orlando.

It must be acknowledged as the hate crime that it was also because to fail to do so or to disavow it is to perpetuate hate crimes against this community.

More than 20 percent of the hate crimes committed in 2014 were directed at gays and lesbians, according to FBI statistics. This, in an age of presumed enlightenment.

Mark Potok, a terrorism expert at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, told the Sacramento Bee that statistics indicate gays face significantly more violence than other persecuted groups.

"We found that LGBT people were more than twice as likely to be attacked in violent hate crimes than Jews or black people, more than four times as likely as Muslims and almost 14 times as likely as Latinos," he said.

Orlando was both an act of terror and a hate crime.

Moving forward, it is important for us to recognize that if we are to quell terrorism in the country.

And we need to recognize it if we are to put an end to the bigotry that underlies crimes of hate that shadows gays wherever they live.

For a time, the country became one after 9/11, beyond partisanship and division.

Let us become one in support of each other now, too.